


The Purkinje Effect

by ketherphorbia



Series: The Purkinje Effect [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Adventures in Trying to Figure Out What Vault-Tec's Damage Is, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Bonding, Broken Bones, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Drug Use, Fan Vault, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Fun Extrapolating on the Location Equivalent of One-Shot Characters, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, He Ate a Corvega, M/M, Needles, Oral Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Roughhousing, Sexual Dysfunction, Slow Burn, Smoking, Spooning, Synth Vore, Travel, Vault 82, Vault Dweller - Freeform, chain smoking, drunken arguments, pica disorder, wheel of foreskin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2018-12-26 22:56:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 60,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12068652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketherphorbia/pseuds/ketherphorbia
Summary: Something's gone off in Blackstone Gorge's Vault 82. Their food dispensers have worked fine for decades, but the consistency's off. Galen Miner, now above ground, has set to determine if the goo is what's made his people ill, or if there's something more sinister afoot.





	1. Chapter 1

Galen slouched against the concrete overpass column of the Mass Pike. The Stimpacks weren’t helping with his constitution anymore. Neither was the Med-X. Not that it mattered much anyway, since he was down to his last Stimpack. Although grateful he’d had the forethought not to bother with the high road due to pieces of the overpasses crumbling apart, being on the ground put him at frequent risk regardless.

The ex-Vault Dweller had narrowly gotten away from the Gunners at the Mass Pike Interchange, using his tried method of intimidation through gross-out. The military-brat cousins of raiders had been bothered by his bubblegum pink complexion, but they more than anything had wanted him to part with his Vault Suit and Pipboy. Until he’d locked gazes with them and downed a handful of fusion cells whole, then chased them with a fistful of utensils. After such a spectacle, they had immediately proceeded to change their minds about looting his corpse, far more interested in driving him off.

 _They’d never heard of Vault 82,_ he recalled with a wry fatigue. _Sure they haven’t. Only the Quinsigamond settlers know about it. We’ve tried to keep it that way. It’s safer if we only trade with one group of Commonwealth folk. At least, that’s what Opal and Ceruss’ve always said._

He seethed through clenched teeth as he depressed the pneumatic syringe against his jawline. At least the isotopes from the ammunition seemed to be facilitating the Stimpack’s efficacy with his burn scars, though he tried not to linger on the ramifications of that. He’d seen the ghouls in Framingham himself. The Worcester folks had warned him to follow the Boston Turnpike until he crossed an aqueduct, then cross over to follow the Mass Turnpike, since Boston Pike cut through both Framingham and Natick–neither, safe choices for any rational individual. But, some RadFowl had come to investigate because he’d been stupid enough to kindle a fire when he paused for the night, and things literally went South as they pursued him.

The pink dreg thought himself lucky that the sinewy and grotesque RadFowl flock had seemed equally appeased with a handful of ghouls to take out their incited state upon, and that he’d lost them with only having had to dispatch with one himself. The mutant birds, once geese, were nearly the size of a man, and their beaked teeth were a gnarled mess of serration and tusks. The notion chilled him, that the wasteland might have warped the turkey population in a similar way as it had the goose, and had kept him from sleeping for several days to come. As feared by the red flag of the ghoul encounter, he’d gotten turned around from the chase and was still on the Boston Pike, ending up trapped on a Framingham cornerstore roof a few blocks from the ghoul-infested university. It had taken him three days to find an escape route that didn’t cost him the leathery, disfigured wretches following him. He’d managed to find a path North enough to begin traversing Mass Pike as intended, and he’d thus safely avoided the Super Mutant camp at Natick Banks, of which the Quinsigamond settlers had forewarned him.

Getting in a mental funk recalling the ghouls and what had caused his encountering them, he noticed he’d absently swallowed the syringe, and he cursed under his breath at his sour mental state. He stripped out of his form fitting, royal blue vault suit with its golden trim, and put on the drab green janitor’s jumpsuit he’d found in what was left of Framingham. Then, he lit up a cigarette and puffed at it limply as he rummaged through the other contents of his pack. It’d be less conspicuous for him to travel this way. Vault Dwellers seemed far rarer than he’d anticipated. And his complexion made him that much more conscious of how out of place he felt. He came across an old green dress in the junk he’d accumulated scavving the ruins he’d since traveled through, and using the last of his daylight and a bit of his duct tape reserves, he fashioned a hood for his jumpsuit that more or less matched it. He put out his cigarette against the concrete column, then swallowed the filter. As much as he hated to admit it, he was getting hungry.

Piling everything back into his sack, he separated out the coffee tin and a spoon. With a heavy sigh he unscrewed the tin and ate the last of his food dispenser rations from the Vault. It was a pink, mostly flavorless gel, though he’d long since grown accustomed to its consistency and acetone-like bouquet. Up until recent years, no one had been capable of speculating why they’d been turning pink. Not until the dispensers started failing and now extruded a higher concentration of whatever in the recipe was such a color. Rather than grate on the fact he was now officially out of all conventional rations, he quickly reminded himself he still had half a box of Fancy Lads. He propped up his head with his sack and lay with his back against the overpass column, and sleepily he wondered if the other vaults also had pink inhabitants due to a flaw in their dispenser recipes.

“Then again, whoever labeled it food-safe probably didn’t expect anyone to eat it in every meal for years and years,” he murmured to himself thoughtfully, falling asleep oddly comforted by the consumerist apologism.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen arrives at Diamond City, where he's been told he might find answers for what's wrong with Vault 82's food dispensers. (mild emetophobia tw near the end)

Galen awoke before dawn to three RadRoaches trying to chew him up. Before even fully conscious he'd pulled his knuckledusters from his pockets, kicked off the foot-long vermin, and used his fists to crush them into the dirt. With his hands covered in gelatinous bug guts, he gained his faculties a bit better, and licked his hands and weapons clean before removing the dusters from his hands and returning them to his pockets. Then, he sat up, and called it providence that breakfast had come to him. He brushed back his undercut, which had fallen to the left side as it always did, and took his shucking knife from his back pocket and unsheathed it. He'd made it out of boredom from a combination wrench back in the vault, but out here the shiv was a necessity. He fileted the abdomens of the three assailants, and ate the bitter, tender flesh raw, straight from the knife’s edge. A full stomach was quite reassuring, and the persistent aftertaste as he resumed his eastward travels was a reassurance everything would turn out fine.

The Quinsigamond settlers had told him that the biggest settlement in the Commonwealth was Diamond City, and that he'd likely find help there they themselves couldn't provide him. From their description, he surmised that its population had dug its heels into Fenway Park. From the Interchange onward, raiders were the worst of his worries the next two days, as he made his way to the great green gates, and he skirted encountering them altogether. The park gates were open the early afternoon he arrived, with one guard in catcher gear standing watch near the ticket counter.

"What are you coming in for?" the young man called out, stopping Galen in his tracks.

"Hungry." The scent of fresh soup reduced him to abstracts, and distracted him from answering more accurately.

"Ya got caps? Power Noodles don't barter."

"Yeah, I got caps."

"Go see Takahashi then. He'll get you hooked up. You look... like you should go see Doc Sun after you got a gut full a noodles, though. I don't know what you been into, but that don't look healthy."

Rather than be bothered to argue, Galen simply thanked the young man and went inside.The shanty town was a landscape of shipping palettes and corrugated steel. After everything he'd seen since stepping foot above ground, this felt like the epitome of metropolitan life post-apocalypse, complete with people even dwelling in the box seats. He easily gleaned the location of the medical facility--Mega Surgery Center--to the right of the literal town square, but the night before he'd crammed his face full of Fancy Lads and shortening and had nothing left to eat. Descending the concrete stairs into the diamond, he had his eyes on the noodle stand symbolically located on the pitcher's mound. The fastest way to his heart always had been through his stomach.

"Hey swatter swatter!" "Get your fix here!" "Guns, ammo, artillery--you name it!"

His head swam with calorie deficit and sensory overload, accustomed to the quiet of the open road for nearly two weeks now. Not even the vault back home got this rowdy during their weekly field day. The cries of the merchants' booths boxed his ears a bit, and he found himself sitting at a bar stool at the noodle stand and staring vacantly at a lunchbox in front of him.

"Nani shimaso-ka?"

"Wh--" Galen's head snapped up, startled, and he found a yellow barrel-bodied robot with a chef's hat addressing him. One could see the Protectron's processor whirring about behind a large glass panel which design wise represented the void where one might otherwise have expected a face. "I'm not Japanese, I'm Pin--"

"Just say yes," the settler next to him interjected between slurps on her own bowl of fresh ramen. "It's the only word he gets."

He grimaced, then looked at the robot squarely while he put twenty caps on the counter between him and Takahashi.

"...Yes?"

Almost faster than his eyes could follow, the robot prepared and presented a bowl all for Galen. Fresh carrots and tato, with something he guessed was reconstituted iguana bits for the protein. It smelled exceptional. He was grateful the robot didn't stand there and stare expectantly as he ate, since it took him some time to steel his nerves to consume something with fresh produce in it. The noodles even seemed like razorgrain meal instead of the instant squares found as prewar rations. It went down easily enough in three or four good chugs. The blond woman next to him noticed the pink stranger didn't even bother with utensils, but she didn't know it was because he'd resorted to eating them the day before.

"That's some appetite, Blue," he heard a second woman mumble lyrically to his other side. She had on a red coat and a press cap, and had dark hair.

"Blue?" he scoffed, leaning to add his bowl to the stack at the end of the counter. "Y'need your eyes checked."

"You might not be wearing your vault suit right now, but... not a lot of Commonwealth folk have got a Pipboy." She sat beside him, nonchalant, and playfully tapped the screen of the chrome device at his left wrist. "Besides, haven't seen you before. Y'look a little lost. And I think I'd remember a gum rubber pink Vault Dweller."

"You're a reporter, aren't you."

"Ooohh, read me like a paper. But you, you seem like front page news. Guessing you noticed we gotta newsprint press on the town diamond." All he did was nod, trying to ignore his gut's disapproval of his choice of food while also being patient waiting for this young woman to get to the point. "Can I get an interview? The people of Diamond City could use an outside perspective."

"Here's your headline: Man from out of town says no."

She snorted at him and got up. "Wise guy, huh? Fine, be like that. You know where to find me if you change your mind."

As she went off to the news stand titled "Publick Occurrences," he turned the other direction with his eyes on the Mega Surgery Center.

"Ignore Piper," the first woman mumbled, chewing on some gumdrops. "She's the nosiest person in this place."

"Guess if it pays the bills," he replied offhandedly, not paying attention to her as he got up and walked over to speak to the doctor working at the equipment-crowded porch of the small building.

"What's a bill?" she thought to herself aloud.

"What is it?" The impatient Japanese man in a white coat did not look up from what appeared to be a bloodwork panel. "It had better not be about cosmetic surgery again."

"Cosmic... surgery?"

Not recognizing the voice, the doctor glanced to Galen a moment with a brief raised brow before returning to his work.

" _Cosmetic_. As in 'not due to life threatening circumstances.' Are you seeking treatment? The best thing I can recommend for heat stroke is plenty of rest and clean, cold water."

"It's not-- heat stroke, doctor. I've come a very long way. Blackstone. Please, just. Hear me out."

The man stopped what he was doing and set down his work to turn and face him attentively.

"This must be quite serious, if no one in Worcester or Providence could help you." He offered a handshake, which Galen took. "I'm Dr. Sun, by the way."

"Galen," he introduced graciously. His stomach was turning on him sharply in that moment, and he did his best to hide it. "I'm from a Vault-Tec vault, and our food dispensers have been... malfunctioning. We aren't sure for how long, but it’s been runnier’n usual. Our mechanic isn't good with circuitry or any of that, but he estimates that the machines glitched out on the recipe and it’s been leaving out an ingredient. The technician maintaining the machines passed away, so there’s no telling. Everyone is... pink like this. Most of us didn’t really notice the difference because the rations have always been like a runny custard, at least, not until it was obvious not everyone is stomaching it so well."

"Blackstone? I didn't know there was a vault in the gorge."

"We keep to ourselves. It's hard to navigate the valley, with the wildlife." Galen leaned back against the wall behind him.

"...Is your hydroponics sector still operating normally? I know it's a hard shift to get accustomed to after years of the machines doing it for you--having Takahashi make our food has certainly spoiled us here--but if the dispensers aren’t blending and doling out what they’re designed to, you'll have to learn how to cook again to supplement it, or replace it altogether." The accusatory nature of his impatient tone grated on Galen.

"Hydro-whats now? Are you talking about our water supply, or-- you mean farming? We stay below, in the vault. We don't keep land above-ground for cultivating. We have a few folks who make supply runs to Quinsigamond every two weeks, but... the matter a what we've been eating to get by. That's why I came."

"You don't have indoor crops! What a thing to have glossed over in construction!"

"We always had the food paste. Since day one. The nutritionists insisted it was a precise blend of vitamins and fortifyin' ingredients. That it was an omni-source of vegetable, animal, and mineral nutrients." He put his hands in his pockets to avoid holding his gut. "The doctor in Worcester called it 'pica,' the situation we got going in recent years. We been healthier eating chalk, or even mud from the gorge, than we have been with the food our runners bring back. We was almost outta chalk when I left, it's in such demand. The less capable of being defined as food, it seems the less off it makes our stomachs." His stress broiled his discomfort into outright nausea, and he started sweating. "I don't know what's wrong with us, Doc. If we're in withdrawal from chems in our food we didn't agree to, or if we've eaten the paste so long that our bodies can't digest anything else. I know I'm not the only one of us who's sick. Really, genuinely sick. And believe me, I've tried Stimpacks and Med-X, even Rad-X, trying to get my gut to work with me rather'n against me."

Sun's face grew long and he stood silent for some time, the sound of the ceiling fan the only thing competing with the bustle of the town square. As the doctor spoke next, it became increasingly difficult for Galen to remain standing.

"Of course you're all sick. You're severely malnourished. I'm not versed in psychiatric care as much as I'd like, but I know for a fact that pica disorder has been proven a psychosomatic link to malnourishment. As far as your theory that your issue with going cold turkey off your food dispenser rations is chem withdrawal... I do have a treatment for that, if you'd like to try it. To rule out foul play, I mean."

Before he could give the doctor an answer, he folded himself over the rail of the porch and retched. Those eating at Power Noodle on the clinic side tried their best to ignore it.

"Can't... even. Keep down damn ramen." He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and glanced up to where Takahashi worked oblivious to any correlation. He wondered if the Protectron had feelings capable of being hurt, and if it might assume Galen had disliked its cooking. He let out a tepid chuckle and stood again, both hands steady on the rails. "I was doin' fine eating cutlery and shortening on my trip here. Ate some fusion cell ammunition too. I slept so well the night I ate the batteries, Doc. I think I'm dying. I think we're all dying."

"Do you at least feel better, having evacuated your stomach contents in my front gutter?"

"...Ye, honestly." Galen nudged his hood back and made a gesture toward the chair, to which Sun nodded and Galen sat, wiping his forehead and brow dry with his other sleeve. "What was that treatment? All I've got left is about thirteen caps and a good bit of prewar money, but I'll compense you best I can for y'time, consultation, and resources."

"It's called Addictol." Sun retrieved a small white inhaler from one of his stock drawers, and handed it over. "If it works, you were right about the tainted food source. If it doesn't work, you were wrong that it's been tampered with. Either way, the best thing I think your people can do is to stop eating the paste altogether and learn to cook and garden again."

"So do I just." Galen turned it this way and that with a gloved finger on the spray button on the back of it. "How much is one dose?"

"Take in the entire ampuole. Exhale completely first, then depress the button and inhale deeply until it's empty. Hold the breath for at least five seconds, ten if you can."

Galen followed the instructions, and pinched his nose after to make sure he didn't absently exhale prematurely. The inhaler produced a concentrated saline vapor which felt like a salt-soak for his lungs. For a moment he couldn't tell if the slow burn was from the salt or from holding his breath so long. The sting crept into his bloodstream, and lingered even after a deep and heavy exhalation. It took a bit for his breathing pattern to regulate itself, but by the time it evened out, the sting was over with.

"How do you feel?" Sun asked, having been watching.

"I could use a cigarette," he admitted, trying to crack a joke. "How'm I supposed to feel, if it worked?"

"At least you've still your humor about you. Addictol has a slight sting to it as it enters your blood through the capillaries in your lungs. What were your symptoms prior to taking it? Rationalize."

"Nausea. Fatigue. My head felt full of lead." He conceded to the compulsion and swallowed the inhaler. "Nope, still craving plastic and metal. Not quite so tired now, or nauseated. Head's still in a fog."

"...How long have you been... ingesting like that? And what kinds of things?"

"I told you. Ammunition. Chalk. Flatware. Empty containers. As far as how long, though? What year is it? I think my Pipboy might be malfunctioning. The dispensers started fritzing somewhere around twenty... ninety-eight? I've personally been eatin' chalk since about a month before the mechanic officially decreed the dispensers F.U.B.A.R."

"It's April 23, 2285. You're not making any sense. Even if you meant 2*1*98, that would make you over eighty years old, were you old enough to remember the machines failing. You look like you're no further than past your thirties." Sun forcibly looked at the screen of Galen's Pipboy, to discern that the date which it displayed was correct. "Promise me you'll stop eating this paste. And that you'll discourage your neighbors and family from doing so. You're delusional from malnutrition, and if you keep eating objects instead of food, you'll end up poisoning yourself. Fusion cells have lead and nuclear material in them. And many of the things you listed are sharp, or don't break down in the human body. If you don't die of poisoning, you'll require extractive surgery to remove the things you swallowed from your alimentary canal."

"I know it sounds weird, Doc. I've lost track of time myself. Most of us has. I'm gonna have a hard time convincin' em to stop eating it though. Even if you're right, they don't exactly listen to me." He didn't want to concern the doctor any further with more detailed explanation of his and his people's condition, let alone argue with him over the fact he remembered the day the bombs fell. So, he produced a medium sized candy tin from his bag, and removed the lid to display about a cup of pink paste. "I ate the last of my paste rations a few days ago, but when I left I took a sample of it and kept it separate to share with doctors. Can I leave some with you, and have you analyze it? Are you able to do that?"

"I'm not a nutritionist," the doctor declined, shakily picking up a glass stirrer and poking at the surface of the foodstuff. "Are you sure that's what the *food* dispenser is producing? That does not look fit for human consumption."

"Since day one. It just got a little runnier after the machines messed up." He put the lid back on the tin and made a second offering motion toward the doctor, who again declined. 

“I don't know of any nutritionist in the Commonwealth, but I’m certain you’ll have better luck discussing this with Drs. Duff and Scara at the Science! Center on 2nd Street here. They’re very skilled chemists. Maybe they can tell you what  _is_  in it, to better determine what it  _lacks_.” Sun gestured behind Galen, to one of the guards holding an injured arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another patient. Come back and tell me what the ladies have to say. I’d be interested to learn more about this. Your case is most unusual.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen goes to see Dr. Duff.

Once Galen had paid Dr. Sun for the Addictol, he walked down the front steps and dropped five dollars in their cigarette machine to get a pack.  _Second Street_. He chuckled to himself as he lit one up.  _They’ve embraced every bit of Bostonian culture here, down to the diamond itself. The guards wear catcher gear. The streets are named after the bases. Pff, there’s even a guy over there makin’ a living selling baseball bats. But can I blame em? Heck no. Of any building I can think of in East Mass, Fenway Park was built like a damn fortress._

He flicked his ashes and took another drag, sizing up his surroundings to get his bearings. Town square was the inner diamond, three rows of merchant stalls. A second row outside that seemed a combination of residential and merchant blocks. Besides the “swatter” dealer, gun enthusiast, and surplus stalls, he could discern they’d reclaimed pieces of an old Fallon’s building. Behind the Mega Surgery Center was the butcher’s, and Public Occurrences was behind the barber’s to the other side of what he quickly determined was Home Plate. The pink dreg let out a deep, smoky exhale. Piper. He’d been too abrasive with her. Once he’d settled business with these two doctors Sun had referred him to, he felt obliged to make it up to her somehow. Galen swallowed his filter. Before anything else, a haircut.

Normally the going price the barber charged was fifteen caps, but he accepted Galen’s thirteen provided he could bum a smoke while he worked. A fresh trim and clean hair did wonders for Galen’s comfort and confidence levels. Two weeks on the road had left him scruffier than tolerable. John added a taper-fade to the slicked-back, longish undercut Galen desired to maintain. He smiled to himself as he walked off from John, running a gloved hand over his smooth nape and down past his clean shaven jaw. A fresh coat of pomade was far preferred to whatever had been failing to keep his hair slicked in place previously. He did his best to ignore the fact John’s mother, who’d loitered in the other end of the trailer while John worked, didn’t even wait for him to get out of hearing range to start speculating as to why he was bright pink.

Subconsciously he followed the ritual of walking the bases to find his way, and he passed by both the butcher’s and the Dugout Inn before he rounded the intersection of First and Second. He tapped his foot on First Base with a lighthearted spring in his foot before wandering Second Street to locate the one door on the path not labeled as strictly residential. Then he knocked on the blue door before letting himself in.

“I still think you should reconsider,” the dark blonde woman started cheerfully from one end of the two-story room, filled with various equipment and workbenches. Both wore white lab coats.

“Excuse me?” Galen started, to announce himself since it didn’t seem his knock had been heard.

“Ah, we have a guest,” the dark-haired woman with glasses segued from her place at the microfiche. “Dr. Duff, perhaps you can help him, so I can get back to my studies.”

“Ahh, yes, hello! You must be here for our free Science! lesson. You’re a little late, since the children from the schoolhouse have already left on their biology field trip, but I’m at no inconvenience to include you as well.” She smiled enthusiastically.

“Field trip?” Galen echoed, impressed. “This city’s got a fine educational system, if it’s got a science building all to itself.”

“We have some of the best scientific equipment in the city,” Duff grinned. “I promised the mayor himself that we would share that invaluable learning resource with anyone interested in self-enrichment. And what better way to enrich oneself than through Science!, hmm!”

“I think... I like the way you think.” Galen chuckled. The spirit of the woman was catching. “A biology lesson, though? Tell me more.”

“We all talk about radiation like it’s a single thing, but it’s actually comprised of many different types of ionizing rays. X-rays, alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays... Do you know which of them we’re most worried about? The one most associated with the big, old bombs 200 years ago?”

He choked up, a bit unnerved by casual conversation broaching the apocalypse in such a way, but managed to rack his own personal knowledge enough to form an answer.

“Gamma rays, right? I remember cause of the triangle symbol, lookin’ like a piece of the radiation symbol.”

“That’s right! You’ve got a fine mnemonic. Now, gamma rays are bad. Really bad. If your body absorbs too much of that kind of radiation, you’ll suffer from fatigue, anemia, even death. But, some life forms have been living with gamma radiation exposure for two centuries now, and they've adapted. Neat, huh?”

“Adapted? Like, evolved?” Additionally, he wondered to himself,  _Mutated?_  “This is all very fascinating.”

“Yes, exactly! That’s what Science! is all about. Nothing stays the same. Everything reacts. Science! teaches us the lessons we need to survive. Now more than ever.”

“I love science,” he nodded, adoring her bubbly attitude.

“Now how about that field trip?”

“Field... trip?”

“Time to go out and do some Science! of your own, you silly. I usually have a prize for Best Junior Scientist, and nobody’s come back yet so you’re still in the running for it, if you’re interested.”

“Well, you certainly have my attention.”

“You're going to go out and find a Bloatfly gland. You see, the oversized Bloatfly of today evolved from an earlier species of a smaller fly. Radioactive adaptation has resulted in a unique gland that enables it to balance and maintain speed despite its size.”

“Is there... any chance  _we’ve_  adapted like that?” He didn’t want to admit off the cuff that he’d been eating his fair share of Bloatfly past two weeks, especially knowing from this conversation that they had in fact been horseflies before the war. It moderately alarmed him the approximation this conversation had to his own reasons for having come.

“Oh, wouldn’t that be something! You sure seem inclined towards theoretical topics, much unlike my partner, Professor.” The emphasis on her name, directed toward her, elicited an irritated huff from Scara.

“It’s not so much that. It’s... why I came here.” Galen pushed his hood back and made a self-conscious face. “Nobody above-ground’s pink. Just me and everybody else in my vault.”

“Ah! I didn’t even notice. Hm, you don’t eat a lot of any one thing, do you?”

“We’ve been eating food paste from dispensers installed in the vault, ever since the beginning of being shut in. And we haven’t got a garden or any of that, before you ask. Dr. Sun seemed real upset by that, when I spoke to him. He’s the one who sent me here.” He dug out the sample of food paste again and offered it up. “He said you might be able to analyze this stuff, and tell me what’s in it. My people’re getting sick, and everybody’s convinced it’s the paste. But there weren’t problems stomaching it until recent years.”

Duff took it and removed the lid, frowning at the pink goo.

“Pardon the obtuse remark, but this doesn’t look like food. Are you sure what you were eating out of was a  _food_  dispenser?”

“Six valves, in the mess hall,” he nodded. “When the vault was first set up, we had a nutritionist and a doctor. They both insisted it was a vitamin-enriched gel with the full gamut of nutrients anybody could need. They passed away a  _long_  time ago, though, so nobody can talk to them directly about it. Is it not common, for a vault to be outfitted with this stuff? Sun was distraught as all get-out that we don’t farm.”

As he spoke, Duff moved to the chemistry station against the far wall, taking a portion of it with a scoopula to a clean beaker, and she did not look up from her work as she got started.

“It’s going to take some time for me to analyze this. But round back. You mentioned  _adapting_  when you brought up being pink. You think you’ve adapted... to eat...  _this_?”

“It’s uncanny. The longer it goes on, the more I realize I get sick from  _real_  food than I do from the paste. Or anything else I eat.” He cleared his throat, noticing his attention wandering to her scientific equipment. “My people’ve developed pica recently, myself included. Dr. Sun says eating non-food indicates malnutrition, which... confirms to me my theory that the formula for the paste’s changed. Maybe it’s expired finally. Who knows.”

“If you get sick from what you call ‘real’ food, then do you not get sick from eating what you consider  _not_  ‘real’ food? Maybe you’re mixed up which thing is food and which one isn’t.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he mumbled, brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“That’s the great thing about Science! though. Multiple perspectives can illuminate the simplest answer, when from just one you might not notice it.”

“Are you... are you proposing that I stop trying to eat real food? That’s gonna be real difficult, considerin’ what you’ve got there is the last of the paste rations I brought with me. I’m from Blackstone, and even if I could get back there in a timely fashion, I... kind of doubt I could get let back in. Not without something that’d make it worth it to ‘em.”

“Blackstone! My, you’re a long way from home. And all for Science! I admire that.”

“Yeah...”

He rubbed the back of his head, glancing off awkwardly. Duff began a second test sample of the paste, having gotten the first one going in a centrifugal spinner.

“What, besides the paste, have you been eating?”

“Most of my people’ve been eating chalk, or even river mud, but that’s just what I know of. We don’t really talk about it. It’s... a private matter. I’ve been eating a lot of metal stuff in the past few weeks. Even fusion cells. I felt so good the night I ate those batteries. ...Radiation made Bloatflies develop that gland, you said? You don’t think...?” Suddenly he remembered he’d eaten the last of his paste rations the same night, and he grimaced, but said nothing.

“My word, you’ve been eating  _nuclear materials_! You must either have a Lead Belly, or you don’t show symptoms of illness on your sleeve.”

“Believe me, I’m real sick, but I don’t think it’s radiation sickness.”

“Without the results of the tests I’m running, I don’t have any answers for you. Come back in a few hours, and maybe we can get to the bottom of this together.” She laughed gaily. “Maybe... go on your little field trip?”

“I just might,” he replied, excusing himself to let her finish her work.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen bides his time in Diamond City and ends up at Publick Occurrences after all.

On his way out of the Science! Center, Galen decided to continue touring the city a bit to bide his time, and resumed rounding the bases. He stopped briefly at the elevated Second Base intersection and glanced out over the water that had pooled in the center field. When he noticed the water pump, he wondered whether it was a manmade reservoir. The buildings which hugged the outer field were on stilts, he realized, due to this water body. Waterfront property. Heh.

Strolling down Third Street, he noticed a neon sign advertising “Valentine’s Detective Agency.”  _They’ve even got themselves a dick or two. Supposing I’m not the only one with a mystery to solve out here._  He picked up pace to insist he was minding his own business when a gaggle of guards came out of the other set of dugouts. Home team’s dugouts might have been fashioned into a watering hole, but the visiting team’s dugouts had become the precinct offices, it seemed. The direct foil of home team vs. visitors made Galen feel like the main source of contention in this unassuming town was keeping the drunk tank locked.  _They must have good liquor,_  he nodded sagely with a raised brow, skipping briskly across Third Base to round the home stretch.

As he’d strolled, he’d figured he’d scope out the marketplace, but as he passed by the barber shop for the second time that day, he couldn’t help but think of Piper again. He didn’t have much left to burn on supplies, anyway. With the fatigue of resolve embattling him, he pushed the door open to the establishment, only to find Publick Occurrences, like the Science! Center, doubled for a domicile. Most of the end tables were once newspaper dispensers.

“He’s from someplace called Blackstone,” he heard a youthful voice report upstairs. “An’ I didn’t catch the whole thing, but he eats some  _real_  weird stuff. I heard ‘im mention he eats  _MUD_? Gross.”

“You did good, kiddo. You’re gonna make a killer reporter when you’re older.” A pause. “Oh, right. I didn’t forget, I swear. You earned these Sugar Bombs, Nat.”

“Right. ...Thanks.” The youth, who, clad in half a dozen kinds of mismatched plaid, ran down the stairs with her prize--a huge box of cereal--she stopped on the third-to-last step and stared at Galen, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Piper! you’ve got company,” she hollered, sprinting out the front door with her Sugar Bombs, likely thinking he’d tailed her home and risked Piper rescinding the reward.

Piper came downstairs and coolly welcomed Galen.

“Sooo, you finally decided to take me up on my offer.”

“Sister?” He thumbed at the door as it finally clicked shut behind him.

“Yeah. About that...” She waved at her couch, but he shook his head. “Diamond City gets kinda... speculative when somebody new breezes through that leaves an impression. Aaand... you certainly have left an impression. I’m guessing you haven’t even been here two or three hours, and already half the people I’ve talked to since we met at Power Noodles are talking about ‘that strange pink mechanic.’ The rumors fly out of hand, and oftentimes it’s up to me to nip ‘em. Or substantiate ‘em.”

“I definitely stick out up here more than back home,” he joked dryly. “Look, I came here wantin’ to apologize for how I came off earlier. Finding you had your sis spying on me, you really are as nosy as I thought. I imagine you’re real good at what you do for a living.” He offered a handshake, and she took it enthusiastically. “Galen.”

“Galen. I’m Piper, though I guess you already knew that.” She rummaged through one of the old newspaper machines across from the couch, to find a pad and pencil, and she began to scrawl immediately. “So. Tell me a little more about your vault.”

“It’s in Blackstone Gorge. 82. About two or three hours’ walk from Pawtucket. What’s left of it, anyway. Your sister heard right about the mud thing. The most common reason we go up top is to collect a few buckets’ worth, and come back inside with it. The more I talk to people above-ground, the more I realize that there’s very little normal about Vault 82, even as far as vaults go. I. How long was she followin’ me?”

“Not long, I promise. It was her idea. She’s an entrepreneur, sees an opportunity and seizes it. Knew she could shake me down if she came back with dirt. ...Figurative dirt.” She started turning her memo pad at a slow increasing angle to enterprise on her margins, but shortly after righted it to continue. “Word is you’ve already seen Dr. Sun and Dr. Duff since you stepped foot in town. You’re certainly on a mission. And you didn’t pop into Nick’s place far as I know, so it’s not about a missing persons case or a legal dispute.”

“Nick?”

“Tricky dick Nick Valentine,” she grinned. “I’d wager my hat you couldn’t have missed his office sign.”

“...I came here cause a my appetite,” he half-lied, bristling over how invasive all her investigative nerve felt.

“And an appetite, you’ve certainly got.” She pantomimed him with the bowl of ramen from earlier and he rolled his eyes at her. “Clearly it’s more than that, if you’re seeing not one but two doctors about it. You said you eat mud--we’ve got mud here. But everybody comes to this city looking for answers first, supplies second.”

“Somethin’ we been eatin’ has been makin’ us sick. I’m out here tryin’ to find somebody that knows anything about Vault-Tec equipment, or even a nutritionist. I can’t go home without answers. A fix would be ideal, but I’ve at least gotta get to the bottom of this.” Already he felt like he’d given her a double-wide opening to eviscerate him, and he squirmed preemptively, trying to hide the anxiety with a gesture which asked permission to light up a smoke. Piper nodded, and with a flick of his silver flip-lighter, he was puffing away at another cigarette.

“There’s equipment malfunctioning in your vault, then? You... feel responsible for it, don’t you?”

“They kicked me out, okay?” He flung back his hood at her matter-of-factly, then started pacing. “Yeah, I do feel responsible for the food dispensers goin’ F.U.B.A.R. I ain’t got an explanation what’s wrong with the things, but a handful of my people’s thinkin’... That what gave ‘em reason to kick me out might substantiate their theory I changed settings on the vats or something. Why would I do that! I eat that stuff, too! My brother caught me bingeing on rations. To be fair, even if we did fix the machines, how we still have any paste left is a wonder after two centuries subsisting on it. I don’t blame ‘em for kickin’ me out, even if I didn’t do squat to the machines. I’d a done the same.”

“Yikes.” She had to sit down to process what he was trying to tell her. “What is this... paste? That’s the stuff you took to Duff, right?”

“We only had one food source serviced in 82: food paste. It’s like gruel, but it doesn’t taste like much of anything. First 170 years, nobody had any issues with it. It just stained us pink. At least, that’s what most of us assume turned us all pink. When the machines bugged out, the pink color went from a tint to nearly neon.” He tried his best to be tactful about his personal tone regarding chronology, considering how poorly that had gone over with Sun. “People have started dying in my vault since the machines fritzed, Piper. I don’t know if the paste is missin’ a key ingredient, or if it’s startin’ to finally spoil, or if somebody really  _has_  tampered with the machinery. But I figured... somebody out here could give us answers, if people could analyze the paste and tell me what’s wrong with it. All our leadership team has passed away. All of it, and only been replaced spottily from our own people, not Vault-Tec’s.”

“Vault-Tec, Vault... Tec. Mmh.” She tapped her pencil on the spiral of her memo pad. “I doubt you’d find answers at any of the other vaults in the commonwealth. I only know of three. 114′s a hotbed for organized crime, was never finished out and it runs a good length of Boston’s subway lines. 81′s deeply isolationist and they keep to themselves so much, only reason anybody knows about ‘em is the handful of times in the past decade anybody’s come up top for supplies. And allegedly there’s one north of Concord, 111. But no one has ever seen evidence the lift’s ever produced a single soul. No telling if there’s anybody alive in there. However.......” She began to tap her foot instead of her pencil. “There’s a regional office for Vault-Tec in Boston Proper. I’m not sure what kind of district lines their company drew when it came to office jurisdictions back in the day, but that might be a good place to start. I’ve heard they got surplus equipment. And you might even find some terminal entries that’d be relevant, provided you know your way around a keyboard.”

“First place I went from 82 was Worcester. C.I.T. Worcester is overrun with super mutants, but I managed to get a pamphlet before I got caught and had to run for my life from one of those damn lunatics with a nuke.” He pulled it out from a handful of wadded papers in his bag, and smoothed it out on top of one of the newspaper machines. “It was about the different campuses. There’s supposed to be one at Cambridge, one at Jamaica Plain, and one at University Point. They’re smaller trade schools, specifically for biology and med students. If I could find  _anything_  about if and how this paste is adversely affecting us, I’m positive it’d be there.”

Piper went pale at mention of the locations.

“Jamaica Plain’s mostly underwater, as is most of University Point. You really can’t trust prewar maps, these days. Most of the cape’s vanished, for one thing. And from what I heard recently, University Point may be above water, even if only barely--but it’s more than a no-go. That’s  _Institute_  territory now. As far as Cambridge, that building’s also overrun with super mutants. An alarming trend, I’m noticing. It’s nearly flattened either ways, so I’m not so sure you’d find much.”

“Am I hearing this right? A reporter trying to dissuade somebody from trying to uncover the truth. That sounds mighty yellow, if not outright yellow-bellied,” he grinned, offhandedly eating his cigarette butt.

“Hey!” she objected, slapping her lap with her memo pad. She cleared her throat lyrically. “Hey. All I’m saying is, you shouldn’t go about it alone. Let me come with you, Blue.”

“Maybe if you stop callin’ me that,” he started, beginning to size up whatever she had in the offices. His eyes fell on a can of cutting fluid, but he retained a poker face about it. “ ...I haven’t got supplies to travel on.”

“Go see Myrna at the surplus. She’ll hook you up.” Piper dug around in a magazine machine, producing a carton of Grey Tortoise cigarettes. “Somethin’ t’barter with. Don’t worry about getting me anything, I’ll be good to go by the time you get back.”

“I’m gonna stop back by the Science! Center to see if Dr. Duff’s got any answers for me, before I do anything else.” He was met with a shrill, awkwardly dismissive bark. “What?”

“You’d have better luck asking Takahashi what’s in that stuff. I promise you, you’re coming out ahead if you don’t go back to her. The volatile chemicals she plays with... Let’s just say the ventilation isn’t so great in that building.” When he squinted at her, she added, “She’s got a half dozen screws loose, and has enough trouble keepin’ up with the eleven students from the schoolhouse. She’s not even allowed to chaperone them anywhere after last time. Believe me. Just go straight over to the Surplus, and get ready to hit the road-- Galen.”

His lip turned, brow arched, at the carton in his hands.

“Myrna. Surplus. ...Got it.”

“Keep the Synth talk to a minimum around her, by the way,” she called downstairs. Piper had already started up to her bedroom, flinging things around eagerly. “She’s probably the most paranoid person in the city. If she asks why you’re pink, tell her you got something for it from Doc Sun. She’ll be fine then on, long as you keep your gloves on.”

“And maybe when I get back, you can tell me why we’re  _NOT_  starting with the Commonwealth  _Institute_  of Technology,” he ribbed, feeling like she was deliberately withholding information to string him along.

“Oh, Christ, you’re in luck it’s a long walk to North End,” she moaned. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On his hunt for travel supplies, Myrna meets Galen.

With the carton of Grey Tortoise under his arm, Galen skipped down Publick Occurrences's couple of front steps. A single pack had cost him five dollars, and there were twelve packs--so he estimated to have about sixty dollars with which to barter. He had a bit of money left in top of that, but not much. But, having a sense of direction and some kind of medical opinions, where he'd had none prior to the morning, he found himself grinning.The surplus stall was in the far corner; second base would be directly behind it. A Latina woman in a white dress shirt stood watch boredly with a newspaper. Just as the pink ex-vaultie strolled up, she shooed two children trying to nick her wares. When she caught sight of him, she didn't conceal her startled stare.

"--That's not contagious, right?"

"Absolutely not. Galen, by the way." He offered a gloved handshake. She simply stared at his hand for a moment. "...Right. I need some travel supplies, and I hear you're the one to see."

"We've got a little bit of everything. Don't... touch anything. You sure it's not contagious?"

"I already saw Dr. Sun earlier." He remembered his scripting. "He gave me something for it. Promise it's not catching. Besides," and he wiggled all his fingers at her with an enthusiastic grimace.

"...Ok, but no funny business. I've got my eye on you. And if you see those two brats again, help me run 'em off. They try every day." She flicked her newspaper with a huff, going back to her reading.

Galen began to browse, setting things in front of him that seemed the most likely to be useful. Wonderglue and an industrial tub of shortening, for sure, and a card of needles and a cone of thread. He wanted to fix up his hood a bit better, and he could probably eat on the starchy oil for a week. His eye caught the junk bins off to the sides of the higher commodity items, especially the aluminum can full of utensils. He guessed those were what the kids had been going after, since he could tell a good third of it was silverware from the black tarnish. Remembering what Dr. Duff had recommended regarding accepting the changes in his constitution, he entertained the notion of buying a few butter knives for the road, and picked up the tin to root for a couple. Distracted by his own attempts at good behavior, ironically he didn't notice himself stomach them instead of setting them with his other selections, and he set the tin back down to continue browsing. As he reached for a piece of leather shoulder armor, he found his hand halted by the barrel of a pipe pistol.

"What-- what do you think you're doing? You're a  _Synth_ , aren't you? A reject. They messed up your mold pour. Is that why you're pink? How else could you  _store_ something inside you for later!" She cocked the gun, forehead glistening. "That's disgusting!"

His hands flew up and he backed away a step, but she aimed straight at his face the instant he moved and he stopped in his tracks.

"I-- I'm not-- Here, I'll pay for whatever it was--" He went to hand her the carton of cigarettes, and she snatched them from him, not standing down. "I'm sorry-- I--"

"You trying to tell me you don't even know  _what_  you swallowed! SECURITY!" Her weapon trembled. "I told you no funny business, you... you Geek!"

His stress got the best of him and he snatched the Wonderglue off the table and swallowed the bottle whole. Struggling against the impulse mid-act got him shaking fiercely, and she fired a warning shot at his feet. Reacting landed him flat on his butt, and he glared up at her, rattled to his core.

"Next time I'm not aiming for dirt, Geek."

"Myrna, stop blastin’ that thing." An uninterested guard wearing a catcher's mask finally meandered up with increased attentiveness when he heard her fire at Galen. "What's a matter now?"

"This  _Synth_ here is swallowing my inventory! He ate a bunch of my silver, and then he ate my last bottle of Wonderglue! How could you let him in here? He's obviously a Synth!"

"I don't even know what a Synth is," Galen finally managed to utter edgewise, but this only made her madder. The guard raced to put his arm up in front of Myrna to keep her from firing a second time.

"Aight, fella. Didja or didn’t cha swallow her stuff? We don't take kindly to deep pockets either."

"I meant to pay her for the things before eatin' 'em," he confessed. "I don't know what got into me. ... Surely that carton a smokes is enough to call it even?" He flinched when a second guard came up behind him to cut off his potential for escape.

"You were going to swallow my carton of Grey Tortoise next!?" Myrna hollered incredulously. "You heard this Freakshow  _Geek_! He's already easily cost me a hundred caps in goods, and you heard him himself admit he was gonna steal even more!"

"Are you really still trying to get supplies outta her with her pointing a gun at you, Geek?" the second guard judged.

"You really aren't bright, are ya," the other seconded.

When a third entered the circle forming around Galen, the ex-vaultie knew not to object to Myrna's version of this story. The situation gathered infield attention and he started sweating.

"Aight, come with us. You can't be trusted inside the city walls, fella."

"Garry an' me's got 'im," the first guard told the third, and he and the other each hooked an arm under each of Galen's armpits. "Go on up to Danny and let him know he screwed up lettin' a pink guy in here-- an' why."

"Christ, short stuff, you're heavy as a brahmin," Garry muttered. "Jim, I think Myrna might a really caught herself a Synth for real this time."

"Officers, y'all, y'all can let me go," Galen reasoned pathetically, getting dragged toward the stairs out of the park. "I'll go peaceably. I swear I don't know what a Synth is. I, I, I keep hearing people talk about 'em and I sure wish somebody'd-- Hey-- Hear me out!"

"If I let you go," Jim calmly replied, "Myrna will chew my ear off for a month. An' the half chance she's right about you..." A low whistle. "Yeah, I'm not lettin' go of you for an instant."

"Piper!" Galen tried, kicking at the dirt as they passed Publick Occurrences. The reporter and her sister both stood on the porch, indignant and confused as ever. "Piper, tell them I'm not a Synth!"

"Galen, what did you  _DO_?" she chastised, knowing fully it had gone abominably with Myrna. "Y'all, he's a vault dweller. He can't be a Synth."

"He admitted to swallowin' unpaid merchandise," Jim told her. "Synth or no, this sideshow has gotta go. If he can't keep his sticky fingers off what ain't his, we can't help but give him the boot."

"But--"

"Hehe, that rhymed, Jim."

"You know, it did." Jim chortled a bit, then sighed. "Piper, we'll boot you AN' Nat too as accessories if you try to get involved. I won't have Myrna reportin' me an' Garry to the MacDonough for misconduct."

"Garry, at least-- at least give him this before you lock him out." Piper ran up and slammed a crumpled paper against his shoulder. Though Garry did take the paper, the guards didn't stop moving. The further along they got, the louder she got. "I know what I said earlier, but I went and talked to Duff anyway, Galen. Read. It. Y'all! This isn't justice. All just a huge misunderstanding!" She kicked the newspaper stand at the end of her lot, hard enough to dent it. "AUGH! Y'all are so bull headed!"

Once they got back out to the ticket area, the two guards threw Galen to the pavement. Garry started reading the note.

"Asked Duff about pink food sample. Could only recall testin' a sample a pink plastic. Say Jim, what's this word here say?" He pointed a mitt at the paper.

"Pre... servative. You been eatin' plastic, Piper says," Jim scoffed. "Man, plastic people eat plastic food? Gross." Garry wadded up the paper and tossed it at Galen.

"Never hearduva Synth t'eat plastic. Guess that makes you a Geek  _an’_  a cannibal." As a loud mechanical process began, Garry and Jim each pulled out his pipe rifle with a casual fatigue. "Aight, Geek. The gates are gonna close. If y’know what's good for ya, you'll be on the other side and stay there."

Galen snatched the paper as the wind tried to grab it from him. He briefly caught sight of the guard from earlier getting an earful from the third guard, but he couldn't hear them over the pulley system. He glanced up to see the gates rapidly gaining momentum to close him out, and he gave the guards a short-fused, incredulous snarl before scrambling to his feet and walking away without causing any more of a scene.He shoved the paper in one of his jumpsuit's breast pockets, then fished his pack of cigarettes out of his rolled sleeve and slapped the packaging against the butt of his palm as he stormed off briskly, not paying much attention to the direction. It didn't take long into his smoke for him to notice half a dozen guards were staring at him from their various guard posts along the streets leading up to the corner gate.

"Y'all really suck," he muttered under his breath, kicking at the asphalt rubble, then quickly shying from an Eyebot that hovered too close to him, skulking onward until he no longer saw signs that pointed to Diamond City.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Some graphic violence in this chapter. Galen is fed up. lol)

Galen had walked north into the Back Bay and settled on a secluded shared patio to rest a moment. He’d been picking through a dumpster the block before, hoping for something he could eat for free. He put the colander down on the table with a metal umbrella, and rooted a finger wryly through what he’d dropped into it to carry. A few fountain pens, three tin cans, a plastic spoon, and an empty salt shaker. With a grunt he shoved the colander away from him while he pulled his head together. Rather than eat, he slouched back in the rusted metal patio chair and retrieved Piper’s note from his pocket. He smoothed out the rumpled yellow memo paper on his leg a bit then held it up to read it himself finally.

> Dr. Duff’s memory sieve reared up like I thought, but somehow it was serendipity either way. I asked her if she knew anything yet about Galen’s food sample, but she didn’t know anything about it. After describing it a little better, she laughed and told me that I was asking about the wrong thing, that it  _wasn’t food_ , and  _not to eat it_. She insisted that what he gave her was preservatives. Pure. Plastic. She even showed me the container I’m assuming he gave it to her in. He told me it was pink food paste, and what she had in that tin was certainly pink and paste. Can’t say whether it’s edible.

“Complete and utter bullshit.” He folded it back up and returned it to his breast pocket. Suddenly he wasn’t very hungry anymore. “Bunch a loons.” The dumpster finds got scooped into his small duffel, and he decided to keep moving, hoping to find shelter before dark.

He hugged the stone fences at the perimeters so he’d cast less of a shadow. So many places seemed wholly unsafe. He passed behind the Boston Public Library, fully aware it was yet another building overrun with super mutants. He spat at the concrete, livid those lumbering green things were likely using the books within for kindling.

“You puny human,” a strained, deep voice snarled. “I’ll eat you!”

Before Galen could react, he had a bullet in his right shoulder. Balling into the flinch, a fold of his jumpsuit went between his teeth, and he seethed while he fished out his left knuckleduster and donned it. When he whirled around, he didn’t even bother to size up the super mutant that had followed him around the corner of the library, and smashed his wingnut-studded fist into the hand with which the mutant was aiming. The gun went off as it skidded on the street, and the mutant hollered incoherently.

“I’ll rip your face off!!”

The mutant, towering easily three feet taller than Galen, threw an over the head two-handed hammer fist down at him. Dodging found the pink scrapper the opening to kick the mutant in the knee. The upward hook that came next connected into the mutant’s jaw, giving it a bitten tongue. Blood pouring out of its mouth, the mutant lunged to grab him, only for Galen to drive a left hook into his cheekbone, cracking the mutant’s eye socket. Half-blinded, the mutant squeezed Galen’s bleeding right arm and growled. Galen landed a second crunching punch to the right side of the mutant’s face, and it dropped him to holler more. Once he’d stood back up, he slammed his fist into the mutant’s injured kneecap, and the mutant buckled with a shrill moan.

Now that he had the mutant partially incapacitated, he knelt up on top of it and crushed its voicebox for good measure. Then he switched over to his bladed knuckleduster from his right pocket, and flung three or four solid strikes into its throat before its head came off. Breathing heavy with his arms covered in super mutant blood, he looted the lummox and found various bone relics of its previous meals, as well as the pipe rifle with which it had shot him.

“This, I’ll keep.” He paused long enough to empty its rounds into his pocket, and dismantle the foot-long bayonet, which he swallowed in one fluid motion. The rest of the gun went into his duffel. The ragged texture of the rusty knife going down punctuated the satisfaction of victory, and he slicked a hand over his undercut with a sigh. It didn’t take him long to decide it was a good idea to pick up the pace down this street, though he did treat himself to a smoke to take his mind off the injury he’d sustained.

There was no way his right arm wasn’t broken.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Semi-graphic depiction of broken bones and gunshot wounds.

When he had gone east on Newbury, Galen had crossed paths with the Boston Public Library, and he had cut down Mass Avenue then taken Boylston Street behind it in an attempt to avoid the super mutants.  _Some lotta good that did_ , he thought to himself as he came to an acute street corner forking east and northeast. He swallowed his cigarette without putting it out, and curled his lips at the pain saturating his right side.

To the left of the acute kerb, an unkempt lawn lay a block away, with a bronze prewar statue of a figure of which he couldn’t discern the identity. Looking beyond it, there appeared to be a church. To the right of the fork, however, he could clearly discern the pike fencing and hanging cages characteristic of super mutant squats one block down, streaking the visible length of Boylston Street. The obvious choice had him shambling to the left.

Galen stopped abruptly when he got up to the lawn of the church. More mutant piking.  _Shit_. To his right at the intersection stood a Pulowski Shelter. A faded bright blue, these cylindrical structures were once phone booths which could double as a one-person defense in the event of a nuclear event. Everything felt heavy as lead, especially his spirits. The church was too close to the super mutant defenses, so he wrote off any likelihood that he’d find safety or peace of mind in the place of worship.

He walked over to the Pulowski Shelter and pulled the hinged plate-handle. The curved pocket door slid away to reveal a skeleton crumpled in the floor, and half a dozen books were strewn about the nondescript body.  _They must a run here from the library when the sirens started._  All over again, he was livid over the loss of the library to those oafish green brutes. He extracted the body from the shelter and laid them in the bushes behind it.

“ _Only room for one of us_ ,” he whispered to them, winded. He got inside and shut the door. Hopefully nothing was anywhere in the vicinity, with both a strong enough sense of smell to track him, and the strength or dexterity to extricate the door from his hiding place.

Acerbically he sat against the curved inner wall of the shelter, and slumped his sack into his lap with his good arm. He couldn’t move his right arm at all, not without it lighting every one of its nerve endings afire. Part of him was grateful the overhead light still worked, for now. Unzipping the duffel, all he found was junk, the mutant’s pipe gun, and fifteen dollars. While he thought on his options, he shoved the salt shaker in his mouth, and he swallowed in order to down the plastic spoon also. The remnants of the dress from which he’d fashioned his hood lay at the bottom of his inventory, and his brow piqued to notice he’d retained the unused belt from it. Leather. Good. But, the first thing he had to do was inspect the damage. Dread overwhelmed him once he’d assessed his options for taking care of whatever injuries he’d sustained, and he hesitated.

_I’m only alive because there’d only been one of them out scouting. I was reckless, attacking it head-on like that. Why did I let my temper finally snap? Why was that of all things the last straw in this shitty day?_

He snorted hard and squinted. He felt he would have fared much better against that thing if he’d known how to use a knife in a fight. Until he stepped foot above-ground, he hadn’t landed an armed punch against anyone since before the war. (That wasn’t to say he hadn’t gifted a black eye or two.) There was such a fast learning curve of adaptivity in the Commonwealth. He’d have to do better. These super mutants seemed to be  _everywhere_  he needed to end up.

A breath hissed out of him as he unzipped and pulled his jumpsuit over his right shoulder, leaving the sleeve pulled down to his elbow. His sleeve was wet enough he couldn’t be sure how much was his blood and how much was the mutant’s. Removing his left glove with his teeth and letting it fall into his lap, he tenderly used his bare fingers to test the shoulder joint integrity, then gradually moved his wary touches down the arm. To wholly free his right arm from its sleeve, he had to squirm out of the entire top half of his jumpsuit with it completely unzipped, but when he did, he simply stared at the damage he’d sustained.

The shoulder seemed dislocated, and his humerus was probably crushed. The mutant’s gun was modified for rapid-fire, he realized, noting at least three bullet wounds along his arm when he’d only noticed one even during the altercation. He pulled out his knife and used it to get his undershirt off himself, then put the white tee toward sopping the blood off his upper arm and shoulder. He couldn’t get the glove off, but he didn’t care.

“Bright-- pink,” he muttered with a seething wince, applying pressure to one of the holes he’d found in his arm. He didn’t remember the last time he’d actually seen his own blood, but he certainly didn’t remember it not being red. It ran opaque, and a cooler but more vibrant tone than his bubblegum complexion. His mind wandered again to Piper’s note. “The hell did that paste  _do_  t’me, that even my blood’s stained goddamn neon pink?”

For a moment, he glared at the biggest wound in the fluorescent light of the Pulowski shelter, watching the stuff pool up just to guarantee it actually  _was_  blood. Then, he sopped it away in an attempt to quieten the othering reality he might not even be human anymore.  _Maybe the Diamond City security guards d’been right t’kick me out like that._

He popped a couple of .38 rounds from his pocket between his teeth and scowled, then guided his right elbow by the wrist. Once bent across his midsection, he hyperventilated a bit before wrapping the tee shirt fabric around his upper arm. Then, he praised the luck that he’d used the skirt of the dress to make his hood for sake of yardage, because now he’d been left with a manufactured sleeve. He unbuttoned the blouse-cut front and strung the belt through one sleeve, then slipped his right wrist into the other sleeve and used the strap to cinch it up firmly as he could comfortably get it in order to immobilize it. The fact it had been his right arm pissed him off to no abandon, and he slammed his head against the wall behind him, swallowing the bullets he’d been biting. Once he’d recovered from the strain of binding his arm, he buttoned up the blouse-front at the inside bend of his arm, and he turned his jumpsuit’s right sleeve inside-out before shimmying back into it and zipping it up.

He sank where he sat with a sigh, and he inspected the various books the last occupant of the shelter had borrowed. The only one not disintegrating beyond legibility was a copy of H.G. Wells’s  _The Time Machine_. Barely he kept himself from screaming and flinging it at the opposite wall of the tight enclosure, but he still threw it down at his feet with a huff. Suddenly too worn out both emotionally and physically, he lay down on his left side with his free arm under his head, and curled against the curvature of the shelter to rest.

He’d set out first thing in the morning, he told himself.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate for a place he can feel safe and recover, Galen keeps walking until he can't walk anymore. (Injury tw)

When Galen awoke, he pushed himself off the floor of the Pulowski Shelter and rubbed his pinkèd face with a groan. The dry, stale air stuffed his sinuses. For breakfast, he helped himself to the fountain pens and the rest of the bullets in his pocket, and put the onerous overdue library book in his bag. His Pipboy indicated it was around six in the morning. He slung the duffel across his back and cautiously opened the automated pocket door of the shelter. Initial scrutiny suggested the coast was clear, but he put his left hand in his pocket and equipped himself with his studded knuckledusters as he walked across the church’s lawn--just in case.

He found himself walking east on Newbury again, and he sighed, pulling his pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. He preferred to keep them in his right sleeve, but he couldn’t very well do that, and he grumbled at the necessary for habit adjustment. Shaking it to look in the foil-peel opening and squinting one eye shut, he counted four cigarettes, and his face soured. Scrimping won over impulse, and he put them back in his pocket and pulled up his hood again, moving on.

A few blocks later, he noticed a stairway to his left which went below the street level. A comic store. Not just any comic store: Hubris. Rather than a billboard-style or neon sign, its graffiti-stylized branding sprawled above its door. Glancing up briefly, Galen noted a handful of billboards at the top of the five-story building, one of which made greater duplicate of the one at his eye level. The kid in him wondered thoughtfully how many comic books might have survived two centuries, though he doubted many considering the condition of the books he’d found in the Pulowski. Still, his curiosity had him descending the stairs.

There lay a body before the front door. An older man, with long grey hair and a shaggy beard, wearing tatters. From the looks of it, the death had been recent, with deep gash wounds in high contrast to the man’s pallor. Swallowing his anxiety, he crouched down and felt the man’s pockets for any valuables, in the likelihood the man hadn’t been killed for what he possessed. All Galen found was a box of .38mm ammunition, a dried cob of corn, and a note. When he read it, he wondered whether it had been a job opportunity or a purposeful death trap. Someone had tipped the man off to Hubris having decent loot. Not finding anything of true value, it was clear whatever had done the man in either had not been sentient enough to care about looting the body, or there had been exact things which exceeded the value of everything else the man possessed--including his life. Either way, Galen didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Eventually Galen came upon a rusted old military truck at an intersection, compact and squat like a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but built like a tank complete with treads and two turrets at the hood. The back hatch was open, its contents likely long since collected. Along the right panel of the truck was scrawled the word “SWAN.” He thought it might have been an army acronym, but as he rounded the front of the vehicle, he found there was a pond. Enclosed by wrought iron picket fencing with concrete posts every few yards, the small park boasted a decent number of shade trees, two tiny buildings, and a white dome-roofed gazebo. In the water was a single swan-shaped fiberglass paddleboat. On the water’s surface grew large lily-like flowers, clustered mostly around the edges. Curious as to why such a thing would be announced on the side of a truck, he entered the park through one of the fallen picketing panels. At the center of the pond was a cluster of garbage, including tires and broken pieces of several other swan paddleboats.

He was on his way over to the nearer of the two buildings, a wooden shack, when a massive tremor shook the park and water shot everywhere with a rumbling roar. In a panic, Galen only turned enough to see a polyphemian hulk had risen from the pond, the garbage knot balanced on its head like a helmet.

 _So that’s why the tires didn’t sink_ , his brain short-circuited.

And he ran as fast as he could around the pond to get away. His legs didn’t take him in useful directions at first, and he kept getting mentally trapped by the wrought iron picketing. Ultimately he found his exit to the side of the other structure, and he tore down the street. With another roar, Galen screamed, positive the twenty foot tall “Swan” was chasing him.  _He did not want to find out if it had been waiting around for its Leda._  A low, airy whistling closed the gap behind him, and he wheezed “shit shit shit” as he sprinted as hard as he could. The giant had thrown an entire concrete pillar his direction, and the impact turned the bus he ran past into a pineapple bomb. The explosion sent shrapnel everywhere, and he stumbled, falling flat on his face. And his arm. He yelled again, nearly throwing up from the pain.

Stunned by the fall, he lay in the broken street for what seemed like over an hour to him. Disorientation suggested to him that he’d recovered quite quickly, on the other hand, and that the hulking behemoth of a beast would be fast on him soon. Yet, he didn’t hear any movement, or yelling. He was positive he’d hear  _something_  if the Swan had followed him. Perhaps it was simply violently territorial. Either way, he didn’t look back, still at a brisk pace onward.

The pink dreg checked his Pipboy to see he was now traveling north, and that it was around noon by that time. Something about going deeper into the metropolitan area struck the reckless desperation in him, considering how almost every large structure he’d come by had been overrun with super mutants or madmen with firepower. Every direction he turned had either turned him out or hunted him like food. What other choice did he have? Somehow, figuring out how to live a solitary life didn’t seem so bad. He opened the box of ammunition from the victim of Hubris into his pocket, then fished out a handful and popped them like trail mix. Eating unconventionally like this, he’d felt hungrier, but satisfied for longer between meals. Thoughtlessly, this observation didn’t seem to unnerve him, and he began to walk more casually.

The next time he came across an abandoned bus in the street, it was on its side, half-buried in skyscraper rubble. To his right of the intersection was the ramp to an overpass, and his instincts had been consistently telling him to avoid potential dead-ends like those. To his left was what he figured must have once been an apartment building, with wrought iron windows and a green awning. He noticed the dark red dripping mesh sack hanging in front of it, just a fraction before the super mutants in the building would have seen him. He couldn’t go left, or right, and doubling back would potentially re-encounter the Swan. So he tiptoed, as best he could, unable to properly crouch without both arms to balance.

“Is someone there?” one wondered out the doorless facade, its voice like sandpaper.

Galen froze behind a wall of sandbags, listening intently for footsteps. When he heard none, he peeked over the top to observe the three he could see had lost interest, or thought the first had been hearing things. So he pushed on, managing to the corner of the next intersection, now beyond their line of sight.

Relief was fleeting. Soon he noticed the extensive sandbag defenses around a building at the next block ahead, and immediately recognized the outpost guards as Gunners, with their army green fiberglass combat armor. There was no turning left, and turning right--

His head fell sideways in confusion and concern. Neon signs advertising someone, or something, called “Goodneighbor.” A source of electricity seemed like a good portent, but who or what was a good neighbor, and why were there so many fluorescent arrows pointing down to what he was positive was a dead end? He had little choice but to wander nearer to investigate. It didn’t seem like any kind of trap a foe he’d yet encountered would have concocted.

Once the stress of being found by the Gunners, or by the super mutants, diminished, he could tell his fall from the bus explosion had rendered at least one more fracture in his right arm, this time a forearm bone, and he became self-aware enough to observe that his arm had started bleeding through his jumpsuit. His head felt full of cotton, and his eyesight was developing an inconsistent focus. If whatever maniacs that owned this entertaining eyesore didn’t kill him, he was convinced he’d bleed to death by the end of the day.

The arrows got bigger and longer, all pointing at odd angles toward an unassuming blue metal door installed in a quite-tall wooden fortification barricading the entire width of the street it now subsumed. With a deep, bated breath, he tried the door. Finding it unlocked only nettled his nerves worse.

Yet, when he stepped inside and quickly shut the door behind him, he found a smallish cobblestone open-air plaza with two store-fronts directly ahead of him. When he cautiously walked toward them, a few of the figures he could tell were guards for keeping the peace noticed him and watched. The handful of them ported dress suits, either fedoras or bowlers, and submachine guns. He stopped, actually reading the signs of the merchants.

_The one on the corner read “Kill or Be Killed.”_

The pink dreg swallowed hard.

“Hey, y’new around here,” one of the guards called out helpfully. Galen turned to look to the source of the hoarse voice, to observe he exhibited similar disfigurement to the feral ghouls he’d seen in Framingham. His nose was missing, exposing his septum and turbinates, and compounding the somewhat flat affect of his tone. “Y’need somethin’?”

“Y’look like y’could use a drink,” a second chimed in. A glance told Galen he, too, looked like a feral ghoul. But, these people were speaking intelligibly, carrying themselves normally, and even had the faculty to (he assumed) wield the weapons they carried. His head swirled a bit as he saw of the four men in the small plaza, only one wasn’t ghoulish in appearance.

“A stiff one,” a third chortled. “Man, you deaf or somethin’?”

When he found himself speechless between his critical health and fear that these ghouls were swarming to attack him, the four began to close in on him to investigate his state, and he backed away. His heel caught what had once been the kerb and he keeled backwards, fainting before he even hit the ground.


	9. Chapter 9

Galen fluttered his eyelids with a groan, and sat up. He was no longer wearing the jumpsuit, now in just his boxer-briefs. After a moment awake, his recollection prodded him of having broken his arm, but he looked around in the dim light. An upper-story room, with a few mannequins scattered around. He couldn’t remember where he was, let alone how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was glowing neon signs. Had the super mutant encounters been a nightmare? He sat up on the stained, near-primordial mattress he lay upon and looked himself over, finding no injuries, though his right upper arm was a bit scarred up. No, it had happened--but how long had he been here, for his arm to have healed up so well? Beside the bed was a metal plate with a sweet roll and a can of pork and beans, as well as his lighter and pack of cigarettes. From how they were arranged, he knew he hadn’t placed them there. His Pip-Boy was still on his left arm.

Ignoring the meal, he flicked out a smoke from the pack and laid back on the mattress once he got it smoldering, staring at the ceiling while he puffed at it vacantly. There was a good breeze in the room. Who’d brought him here, and where were they? He glanced around the room, lit by a lantern in the far corner. There was hardly anything up here, save a bookshelf with some miscellany stacked on it. Yet, the door was wide open. Whoever it was, didn’t have him prisoner. He’d hoped to at least locate a pair of pants, but found little in the way of any clothing. Getting up to pace while he finished the other half of his cigarette, he looked out the window.

The view framed by tattered yellow curtains, his brow slacked at remembering finally where he’d ended up. He was directly above the small plaza where he’d passed out. The neon signs had led him there. The ghoul guardians still milled about, a pair of them chatting privately close to the door to the plaza. Occasionally they got loud enough to at least be indiscernible. Off to his right as he leaned on the sill was a large red-brick building, several stories tall, with white-edged windows. It looked in itself quite important, if not striking. Swallowing the butt when he got to it, he realized his vault suit had been folded up beside him, and he slipped into it. Though barefoot, he was no longer in his underwear, and he felt enough reassured of the kind of place he’d found himself, to venture down the single-plank wooden stairs.

“Oh, you’re alive,” he heard a pleasant voice call out as he descended, responding to the creaking steps. “Take it you slept well.”

As his field of vision dipped under the ceiling, he stumbled at first glance in the low incandescent light, and nearly missed a few steps without a banister to catch himself. Another ghoul. There were so  _many_ of them here.

“Can’t handle a friendly face?” she mused dryly, walking away from her front counter to approach him. With her hair up in a messy bun, the ghoul with a heart-shaped face and pitch-black scleras wore a three-piece tan suit, and stood taller than Galen.

“Can’t say I knew, ah, that kind of a face could be friendly,” he replied as tactfully as he could figure, wiping the sorry off his face. “Glad it’s a friendly one. Been a strict deficit of those as of late.”

“Well, you’re not screaming. That’s a delightful first impression,” she grinned. “We’re more common than you think, though I don’t believe the same could be said of, well.” She gestured, intimating his tactlessness for sake of irony.

“There’s more of us, promise. Kinda obvious I ain’t from around here, huh? Uh. You the one who did first aid on me?”

“You sang a swan song on Goodneighbor’s steps. I was the closest one with Stimpacks.”

“Ugh, don’t mention swans,” he wheezed, his face scrunching in emotional exhaustion.

“So that’s what happened to you,” she deduced. “Yeah, it’s real obvious you’re not from these parts. Festive coloration aside, everyone in these parts knows to steer clear of Boston Common.”

“Honestly, that thing wasn’t what roughed me up the worst,” he confessed, crouching on the stairs with a sheepish glance toward her. “I’d gotten in a fight with a smaller one right before that.  _It’s_  what broke my arm in the first place. Running from the Swan only compounded the injury. ...Thanks, by the way.”

“Name’s Daisy,” she replied. “Did you notice the food I left you upstairs? Noticed you were out of food supplies. Hope y’don’t mind that I took the liberty of inspecting what you had on your person while you were out cold. Promise it’s all where you left it. Had to make sure we weren’t taking in some lousy raider. You understand.”

“...I did notice.” He shifted where he sat, a bit grateful the stairwell was relatively dark by comparison to the rest of the store. “Appreciate the gesture, but ah... how t’put it... S’not what I eat.” He pointed vaguely to the pepper mill on the counter next to her, not even sure how to quantify his nutritional needs anymore.

“Are you used to being able to afford to be picky about how your food’s seasoned?” She snatched it up and wagged it at him. “It’s empty, I’ll have you know.”

“No, I was... more sayin’ that the shaker itself is more appetizin’ than the bread and beans. My stomach and I have been havin’ trouble agreeing on what I should and shouldn’t be eating.”

“--I’m sorry, did you say what your name was?”

“Didn’t.”

A silence.

“Well, I’ve got a section of my stock endearingly labeled  _Is It Food or Not?_  if you’ve got your curiosity about you. You’ve got to eat if you’re going to patch up right.”

“I’d gladly take the shaker, if you’ll have it.” He didn’t budge from his place to browse for himself. “Where  _are_  my things, by the way? Don’t much like walking around here wearing this.”

“I’ve got a working washing machine, if you’ll believe it. Since the plumbing’s rotten in this area, you’ve got to put the water in it yourself, but I figure you’d prefer the comfort of your own clothes not plastered up in whatever that pink slop was. Just hope it doesn’t stain my machine for good, heh.” Daisy handed him the pepper mill, then walked up to the front corner of the store, under the stairs. “It’s almost dry.”

A chill jolted through Galen, to hear his blood was so badly staining that she hadn’t thought it  _was_ blood.

“This is a pretty sturdy settlement.” He verbally sidestepped, fidgeting with the mill to dismantle it. With the crank and screws in his mouth, he mumbled, “to have the electricity to run all those signs, and appliances to boot. How much bigger is this place?”

“Goodneighbor isn’t all too big, but we’ve got plenty of sizable generators. It’s a modest place, with enough amenities--and defenses--to make it home for more than a few misfits and outcasts.” She grinned strangely, watching him swallow the barrel of the mill. “You weren’t kidding. Don’t choke, kid.”

He forced a breath through his nostrils once he’d gotten it down. “--Not a kid.”

“Sorry to break it to you, but there’s a couple hundred years between me and the twenty-somethings like you running around here. You’re a kid to me.”

“I.” He couldn’t not stare. “Seems neither of us looks their age,” he chuckled, mildly distressed. “I get the impression you’re trying to tell me you were around before everything was blasted to kingdom come.”

“Had a front seat. It’s how I got my immaculate complexion. I look good for 220, though, don’t I?”

He sat there for a moment, awed, until the math worked itself out in his head.

“You would’ve only been, what, ten then? Don’t ghouls stop aging when they turn?” He bit his lip furtively. “I’m not about to go about guessing an upstanding young lady’s age, but you’ve got to be at least as old as me if you literally witnessed the bombs.”

“...Either you are the most well-preserved ghoul I’ve ever met, or you’re the second-best bullshitter in Goodneighbor. You’re a smart one, though. The kids in this town have never seen my sour side, and they know to keep it that way.”

“Heh, really, though, Miss Daisy. I’ve gotta make all this hospitality up to you when I’m fit for it. And because I can see it in your face’t your curiosity is chewing you alive--I was nineteen when my family evacuated to the vault I’m from. One of my worst recurring nightmares is an action replay of running down the gorge from our junkyard, trying to make it in time. Half the time the nightmare tells it that the vault was nothing more’n a cave with a safe door lockin’ us in from the outside.” He laughed quietly. “Not sure why I told you that. I haven’t met an above-grounder yet that didn’t go ballistic at the mere possibility that I’m way older than I look.”

“Didn’t want to ask about your Pipboy,” she started, half-beginning to actually believe him. “Most folks I’ve met with one weren’t  _given_  it.” She sensed the reason he didn’t have on the suit for what it meant to him, but didn’t voice that he’d confirmed her assumptions with his dream retelling.

“A little bird told me we got a newbie here in Goodneighbor,” a third voice interjected, low and breathy, “but I didn’t expect a  _vaultie_.” When Galen looked up, yet another ghoul stood before them, donning a red colonial frock cinched at the waist with the Commonwealth flag and cavalier boots. Putting a finger to his tricorner cap in a welcoming nod, he teased, “Good morning.”

Galen simply sat there a moment, blank.

“...I must a hit my head real hard on the pavement.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen leaves his first impressions on Hancock.

“Considering your grand entrance, I wouldn’t doubt that,” the colonial ghoul started, crossing his arms. “You might be seein’ pink Radroaches, but you’re not hallucinatin’ yours truly.”

“Ah, Mayor! I was wondering if you’d stop by.” Daisy smiled warmly at him, her deeply scarred cheeks creasing in admiration. He tipped his tricorner hat to her, and Galen stood at Daisy’s greeting their leader.

“Daisy. I didn’t interrupt anything, I hope.” The Mayor turned to Galen, smirking. “The name’s Hancock.”

The ex-vaultie choking up behind a smile, and rubbed his nape sheepishly with his left hand while offering the right for a handshake.

“You have a fine town, Mayor.”

“I’ve got my place here, but it ain’t a one-man act, keepin’ this place flying. You... gotta name?” The ghoul figurehead pulled Galen’s hand a bit closer to him with his head cocked askew. “I mean, for now it’ll do to call after ya by description, but what are we to do if another pink fella walks in here?”

Seeking some construct of forgiveness and understanding, Galen’s dark eyes met Hancock’s, which were replete pitch.

“I-- I’m sorry, I’ve got so bad at first meetings. It’s been too long. I’m... I’m just some  _freakshow_  geek.”

Hancock burst out laughing and grabbed him with one arm around his shoulder. The ghoulish figure stood about Galen’s height, and was stronger than his physique might have suggested. Shaking him a few times, he held Galen tight and used his free hand to gesticulate animatedly with Daisy.

“Daisy! Don’t we know a thing or two about freaks here in Goodneighbor?”

“Well, how many of us are there now, including our friend here?  _Thirty_?  _Enough for a circus, I’d imagine,_ ” she replied with sly enthusiasm. “He’ll try to bullshit you, Hancock, but he’s at least being honest about the geek part.”

“Seems he’s made his first friend with the most bookish ghoul in Boston, then.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that he’s that kind of a geek. Though he, like myself, does still owe a book he lent from the Library.” Daisy leaned on the stairs behind her, bearing her weight on one arm. “I take it you’d bite off a chicken’s head if I had one. Or are you more of a...  _sword swallower_?” She chuckled darkly to herself.

Hancock let go of Galen, who then shot Daisy a real sorry look, somehow shocked to be so candidly humiliated during his first meeting with their leader. Perhaps layers of deprecation were how they got acquainted with one another. Galen shoved down his flinch, and snorted with a shrug.

“I know what I like.”

The response got a laugh out of Daisy. Too, Hancock chortled nasally.

"Y’got moxie,” the mayor said, his posture relaxing. “That’ll go far ‘round here. And hear me out: A lotta people go about reinventing themselves in these parts, myself included. I wasn’t always this roguishly handsome, for one. The golden rule of Goodneighbor is to  _live free_. Y’feel me? And if that means you want to be free of whoever it is you were before you stepped in my town... then that’s your right.”

“I got a lot in my head, to put my house in order.” Galen sighed. “You don’t suppose I could stick around a bit, do some odd jobs, make myself useful? This is the first place that hasn’t tried to run me out, run me down, or run me through since I left Worcester.”

“You bet your pink behind. When you feel up to it, rub elbows and maybe offer to scratch a few backs. Pretty much everybody here’s itchin’ for something, and all that can mean. Maybe tomorrow, you’ll be a bit more together and you an’ me can walk and talk. And maybe you’ll know better who to tell me you are. In the mean time, gather your stuff come over to the Statehouse, and let Dais’ get t’bed. There’s a spare sleeping bag with your name on it tonight, and it’s getting late, even for me. Talk to the Neighborhood Watch. I’ll tell them to expect ya.”

Hancock patted Galen reassuringly on the cheek, then shot Daisy a finger-gun and took his leave.

“Daisy...?” Galen began vaguely, watching the living anachronism saunter away.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, ear-to-ear, and motioned toward where she’d hung up his jumpsuit to dry. “All your things are under the stairs, sweetie. Go get some rest. Maybe next time you come my way, we can talk books.”

“Sounds a delight. Maybe I’ll even come back and browse.”

Once she’d indicated the location of all his things, he went over to the front corner to immediately slip out of the vault suit and into the green mechanic’s suit. Although his gloves and work boots were dry as well, they were encrusted with muck and blood. He put the boots on anyway, but added the gloves and vault suit to his duffel, then slung the thing across his chest and over his back.

“I hope you have a good evening,” he thanked again. “One more thing, though? Is Mayor Hancock always... like that?” He wagged a pink finger vaguely at the direction the charismatic ghoul had exited.

“With every breath.”

Galen let out a simple chuckle as he left.

“There’s our pink geek,” one Watch ghoul called out from across the way, his grip on his submachine gun loosening as it fell to his thigh. “Evenin’ to ya. Say Harold, I’ll be back in a minute. You,” he pointed to Galen, then flicked his finger gently in beckoning, “Mayor says t’follow me. Y’get a ground floor place tonight.”

“You’re all extending such enormous hospitality to me,” Galen replied, running his hand over his hair as he glanced about the well-survived building upon entry. The greater part of it was darker than outside had been, making it difficult to make out much more than the sound of his heavy steps on the wooden floors. “It... means a bunch.”

“Just promise me y’not a total louse, aight? We got our fair share of destitute misfits in Goodneighbor, but we got ground rules: No stealin’, an’ treat people like they deserve t’be treated. We take care of our own, but ain’t a body in this town’s got time for that rubbish.” The guard extended a hand toward the corner where a straw pillow lay atop a sleeping bag, with a lantern, then with faked legerdemain he demonstrated that the door didn’t have a lock by jiggling the handle. Galen nodded and set his bag down by the bedding.

“I’ve got no intention to screw up the only good thing I’ve currently got goin’ for me.”

“That’s what I like t’hear. Now be quiet and bed down. I don’t wanna have to come check on you.”

Before Galen could answer, the Watch ghoul had shut the door behind him. So, he shucked off his shoes once more, with a one-two thud, and drew his hood up over his head to curl up in the sleeping bag. Having gone without a proper pillow for a month, he fell asleep the moment his eyes shut.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen finally decides what he wants to go by.

Bars of sunlight scattered across the floor and Galen. From his sleeping bag, he glanced around at the variety of filing cabinets, file boxes, and desks, to ascertain he had not in fact been alone all night. There was also another sleeping bag and a mattress, the latter of which another drifter was still using. Both bedding arrangements were strewn with personal effects and other signs of occupation. He checked on his duffel to find it still where he’d left it at his feet. Sitting up, he retrieved his knuckledusters and lighter and returned them to the pockets in his jumpsuit, and also his smokes to his right rolled sleeve. The gloves remained where they were, too hardened with blood and gunk to be comfortable to wear. He’d have to beat the tar out of them later. Getting out of the sleeping bag, he put his duffel into it and zipped it back up, to make it look like the bedding was still being used. Then he put on his boots and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

“You lookin’ for Hancock, he’s in his room upstairs,” one of the Neighborhood Watch ghouls informed him, loosening his steel blue necktie.

Galen nodded in thanks, finding the hall for the building was more circular, with doors to either side of a spiral staircase, and two short halls with a pair of closets each which led one to the room from which Galen had slept, and another directly ahead which he assumed mirrored it. The stairs went down to what Galen figured was a basement, but instead the pink fellow ascended them in search for the man who had seemingly walked straight out of space and time himself.

Two more Neighborhood Watchmen stood upstairs, to either short hallway, one ghoul and one a Latin fellow. They tipped their hats a bit at him as he passed, and he raised a greeting hand in response. The mayor’s white double doors were open, and Hancock sat on the couch with a woman porting military armor and long fiery hair shaven to one side. She noticed their visitor first and rose, her posture and expression firm. When she rose, Hancock glanced up from his smoke.

“You’re here to speak with Mayor Hancock, I take it,” she asserted.

“Ahh, our new face.” Hancock smiled and exhaled smoke through his nose-less nostrils. With cigarette in hand, he pointed over to the armchairs across from the couch. Between the furniture was a coffee table strewn with a variety of reading material, containers, inhalers, and syringes. “Come, take a seat.”

Galen complied, dropping his hood when he did, and produced a cigarette of his own, eyes on Hancock’s personal bodyguard as she reclaimed her seat.

“So tell me, friend. What brings you to Goodneighbor?”

“I’d all but given up trying to find a place that didn’t draw their weapons on me. I... I’ve got compulsion habits,” he confessed through a breathy exhale. “Tried Diamond City, for one. That didn’t last long.”

“I could have told you that,” the bodyguard ribbed condescendingly, futzing with a cigar, nipping the tip with a switchblade before lighting it.

“Farh, give the guy a break. He’s not from around here.” The mayor nudged toward her. “This here’s Farhenheit. She’s my second-in-command.”

“The Neighborhood Watch is under my supervision,” she added, leaning hard into the back of the couch, finally comfortable again. Her eyes didn’t leave Galen.

“Elaborate on the compulsions, though,” Hancock asked, putting out his cigarette in the coffee table ashtray after one last drag. “I’m surprised they’d let you inside in the first place. Skin color’s... usually a determining factor.” He pinched his cheek for emphasis.

“They don’t like synths  _or_  ghouls? I mean, nobody’s told me what a synth  _IS_. But they keep tellin’ me I am one.”

“Couple years back, the windbag that runs Diamond City instated a law banning all ghouls.” Hancock shut his eyes a moment longer than could be a blink. “And synths aren’t welcome here, either, long as they’re still playin’ by Institute rules. A synth’s a synthetic human, created by the Institute. The Institute kidnaps above-grounders and replaces ‘em with a doppelganger. Everyone is welcome in my town--human, ghoul, or synth. But kidnapping? That shit don’t fly on my watch.”

“Tell me about your town,” Galen started, hoping to change the subject at the impression he’d gotten on a bad one. Besides, the ghoul mayor had skimmed the surface of why no one he’d met so far trusted synths.

“Heh. We just recently celebrated our 45th anniversary, but I’ve held my office eight years now. Goodneighbor started out as a raider settlement--outright criminals were the first that Diamond City purged, and they came here. It  _started_  as a raider settlement. But, I fixed that. We live free here, not near-enslaved under armed fascists. This place is a bastion for the lost, wanton, and downtrodden.”

“Of the people,  _for the people_.” Fahr melted into her cigar.

The small history lesson explained for him the design and initial purpose of the neon signs--he’d been right, to question whether they were a trap--but he didn’t mention it. He bit his filter nervously, and mumbled:

“You... forgive me for sayin’ so, but you don’t sound at all like I’d think John Hancock would.”

Fahr and Hancock looked at each other, neither sure they’d heard Galen right, then burst out laughing.

“Friend, you’ve been hitting the Jet too hard,” the mayor laughed. “He’s still in the dirt at the Old Granary, last I checked. It’s a long story, how I got to look and dress like this. Got my name takin’ over this place and settin’ it right.”

“What’s in a name?” Galen mumbled lyrically, taking a slightly Shakespearean posture.

“Rosy pink, this one,” Hancock chuckled. “You gotta Pipboy there. See that Holotape on the table there? Pop it in an’ give it a listen. It’s a short recording, but it’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Galen did as instructed, and inserted the square orange-and-beige cassette into the tray atop his Pipboy. He got to his filter as the playback began, and he swallowed it.

“Wake up, Commonwealth,” a woman’s voice proclaimed. “Synths are not your enemy. They are victims in this war, as well. True, they were created by the Institute. But they were created as slaves. Thinking, feeling, and dreaming beings utterly oppressed by their tyrannical masters. So join with us in fighting the real enemy: The Institute. Join the Railroad. When you're ready for that next step, don't worry, we'll find you.”

“Your thoughts? These tapes’ve been popping up in Goodneighbor past few months. I’ve been noticing some unusual behavior up in North End, too.”

“Sounds t’me like they’re trying to ramp up to do something about the Institute,” Galen deduced. He tried to slick his fallen hair back across his scalp, but it didn’t stay. “They’re definitely not raiders. They’re too organized.”

“Could I get you to do a little recon? I don’t know exactly where they’ve set up shop, and it’s a little too close to comfort, not knowin’ what they plan to do about everybody’s least favorite boogeyman. Sounds like they could be on our side, but they could also be damn fanatics. All bark, no bite, feel me?”

“I haven’t been North of Boston yet since I got out here. There’s no more super mutants past downtown, right?”

“Small pockets, last I checked,” Fahr replied for Hancock. “Nothing like the Financial District or the Commons. Shouldn’t run into more than one or two at a time. Nothing  _you_  can’t handle.” She puffed at her cigar with a sneer to punctuate her jab at him. Galen laughed it off.

“I gotta eat breakfast, an’ see if I can’t separate some supplies from Daisy, but I can definitely do that. Which, speakin’ of breakfast... that issue with compulsions I’ve got... The Watchmen warned me y’all have a strict law about theft. Y’all would be all right if I rooted in your dumpsters, yeah? I got unconventional nutritional needs, but I’ve so far been able to manage with trash bins.”

“What do you think you’re going to find in our  _dumpsters_  that you can’t find at Daisy’s or The Third Rail?” Hancock wondered, drawing a bead on the real reason Galen was there in his town. For a moment, Galen’s only answer was to empty the ashtray into his mouth. Once he’d swallowed, he thought a moment.

“...Flatware, nails, screws, broken plastic an’ glass... An alarm clock sounds real good right now. Anything past its prime, really...”

“You really are a geek like Daisy said, aren’t you?” the ghoul remarked, both offput and impressed. The two of them weren’t quite glaring, but Galen definitely had their attention. 

“The way people keep describing me like one, you’d think that was my name.” The pink fellow chuckled quietly as he eyed the various paraphernalia on the table, unsure of exactly what most of it was. “Is that... all right then?”

“Hey, if it don’t have a lock on it, I’d say  _the fourth amendment_  still holds merit in the Commonwealth. No government to enforce it, but I don’t think much of anybody’s gonna argue with you long as you don’t come across somebody’s stash of a thousand caps.”

“Their fault for stirring up trouble,” Farh tacked on, “if they left that kind of wealth stowed away in plain sight, unlocked. Bad planning.”

“I don’t know what I’d do with that kind of money, either,” Galen said, standing up. “Probably couldn’t hold onto it long enough to count it. It’s been a real pleasure, Mayor, Fahrenheit.”

“You too, ...Geek.” The mayor grinned at him, heavy-lidded. “Mh, that does sound like a name, when you use it like one.”

“Do I sound like a ‘Geek’ to you? I look like a ‘Geek’...” Galen laughed at his bad joke. “It’s fine.”

“Look forward to hearing what you find,” the charismatic ghoul nodded.

“Don’t do anything  _too_  stupid,” Fahr threw after him on his way out.

“Heh, sounds like Farhenheit likes you already,” the human Watchman ribbed as Galen descended the stairs.

“Yeah, it does.”


	12. Chapter 12

After he’d retrieved his duffel from the sleeping bag downstairs, Geek milled about Goodneighbor to assess his options as to stocking up to hit the road. He’d hoped he could have stayed longer before having to head out again so soon, but he thus far had no complaints. They weren’t kicking him out--yet. He was simply earning his keep by running this errand for their Mayor.

The small town was fortified the entire way ‘round, with just the one entrance. He’d stepped out of the Statehouse to the other end opposite the one he’d entered, resulting in his coming across a number of different establishments he’d not yet seen due to being pigeonholed behind the landmark building. To his right, a theater that now boasted the title of “Memory Den,” and to his left, the Hotel Rexford, which still seemed to be operating as such at first glance. At either end of the short span of street were corrugated metal shanties with a good handful of squatters. His dark, angled undercut had entirely fallen to the left side of his head by this point, as it was wont to do. When the Neighborhood Watch noticed his thoughtful, confused glances, one of them--pale hair, wiry sideburns, another of the ghouls--chuckled and walked up to him.

“Y’new here, so I suspect you’re a little lost. Rooms available at the Rexford--Claire charges ten caps a week, though. Fred’s got all the chems you could ask for, if you’ve got the funds. And that over there’s the Memory Den, if you’re interested in relivin’ some... curves you miss, heh. I think Irma might get a kick outta ya. Round the corner’s Kill or Be Killed an’ Daisy’s Discounts, if y’need supplies. And if y’hadn’t been there yet, The Third Rail’s under the Statehouse. Best bar in the Commonwealth, if you ask me.”

“ _Under_  the Statehouse?” He’d listened quietly up until that point. “Under, Rail. It used to be a subway station, then.”

“Bingo.”

Galen thanked him, and rounded to the right around the long Statehouse, through a small square with park benches, and back down a narrow street. Briefly he wondered about the alley to his left, but he could see the door into Goodneighbor ahead of him and went straight rather than investigate what might have been down there. It might be considered trespassing, for all he knew.

He started at Kill or Be Killed first, wondering if it was the kind of place it sounded like. At its front counter was an Assaultron robot, and the pink outsider froze as tactfully as possible in the open doorway of the shop, hoping she didn’t perceive him as an enemy. He remembered that during the war, the government had issued a decent number of the vaguely anthropomorphic machines to the military, and that they’d been formidable, notably terrifying adversaries. Her mostly featureless, long face was divided in half both directions, by a seam which held a single glowing red ocular lens, and had two short radio antennae where ears might have been on a more human countenance. She still ported military paint, down to her designation as USA issue on her chest.

“Well, hello. Everything here is guaranteed to injure, maim, or kill at your discretion. Except me. I only kill when I want to.” Her coy, holographic voice imparted the impression in Galen’s imagination that had she moving features, that she’d have been making eyes at him.

“An... Assaultron runs this store?”

“That’s what my makers called me. An Assaultron: Designed to provide various security related tasks to the modern man. Runtime conclusion: Why work for the man when you can work for yourself? New designation: K-L-E-O. Kleo. Fully independent store owner. Robot enough for you, smooth talker? Now, what are you buying?”

“I, ah, what have you got?” Galen’s feet were cemented firmly on the dark marble floor, and he tried to force a plaster smile. “...Ms. ‘Tron.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m a woman. And I run a store that sells  _very_.  _Large_.  _Guns_. So what’ll it be?”

“Let’s see what you have.” She had him beguiled beyond a faculty to do much better than humor her.

“Take a look around, sweetheart. You’re sure to see something you like. Me, for example.”

He browsed her small store, similar in layout to Daisy’s, owing to its shared building. Most of what KL-E-O had to offer lay behind the counter on gun racks and shelving, but there was also a workbench beside the stairs, laden with various equipment. Albeit impressive, the guns didn’t much catch his fancy, but the prospect of working on his current weapons certainly did. She had an ammo bin, as well as a junk bin. Perusing the various odd things in her junk gave him an idea. All he had left he thought she might like was the pipe rifle from the super mutant, though, but he offered it anyway.

“Would you gimme a box of bullets, a few screws, and the meat mallet there?”

KL-E-O processed a moment.

“What caliber do you require, tiger?”

“Whatever is cheapest. I’m not picky.”

“Sensors indicate an equivalent exchange will be thirteen 10mm bullets, two screws, and a meat mallet. Affirmative?”

He wasn’t sure whether it was a good trade, but what he was receiving in the trade would be more useful to him than if he’d have kept it.

“Before I agree, I realize I should ask if I could. What do you charge to use your workbench?”

“It’s a free town, baby. Do whatever you like. However. Probability is low that your results will satisfy your needs quite like my guns.”

“...Deal.”

The items changed hands, and he walked up to the workbench. The vice, metal saw, and drill press all helped him tool the head of the meat mallet. He took apart his left knuckleduster, removing the wingnuts. With the head of the mallet cut in half with a few connecting lines bored into the raw side, he then licked the raw side out of habit before butting the backside of the line of rings and bumper of the duster up to it. The bolts went in, and he tried it on to admire the sturdiness of the improved design. While he was at it, he made use of the belt sander to freshen the blade of his wrench-shiv as well.

“You run a good business, KL-E-O,” Galen thanked on his way out. “It was good to meet you.”

“Don’t be a stranger,” she replied.

He adjusted his duffel as he strolled into Daisy’s. The friendly, blonde ghoul was sitting on a stool, reading a deteriorating magazine, but she picked up her head when she heard his footsteps.

“Oh! you came back. I heard you next door. Was hopin’ you’d come back.”

“That KL-E-O... sure is a femme fatale type. Hoo.”

“Makes two of us,” she grinned. “Couldn’t get enough of this figure? ...No? Then I suppose you really are the sword swallowing type.”

“Goodneighbor has its deadly vixens right up front and center to greet a fella when he first steps foot in the place,” he played along, matching her playful sneer. “Between you and KL-E-O, I’m doomed.”

“I knew I’d like you. What brings you back in, if it wasn’t me?”

“The mayor asked me to go check up on something for him, so I need some supplies.” A pause. “I know you don’t run a charity. I’ve got about twenty dollars and three tin cans to my name, and I don’t suspect that’ll get me all that far.”

“How long are you suspecting this to take you?”

“Not sure. A week, if I’m lucky? I think I’ll do well enough with whatever I find in dumpsters along the way, but what I really need are... better utensils, for lack of a better description. Tin snips, maybe a hammer if you’ve got one. Still gettin’ used to my change in dietary habits. It ain’t recent, but to be fair I only recently went cold turkey off of the  _normal stuff_.”

“A set of tools? I can certainly help with that.” She casually rose from her perch to fish around in her milk crates of miscellany. Without looking up, she suggested, “You’ve... also got that library book. That might sweeten the deal.”

“You can have it,” he agreed, a little too curtly to have meant anything other than he’d meant it. “I only picked it up because it was the first book I’d found above-ground that wasn’t crumblin’ t’dust. We had a copy back at the vault. I’ve read it... too many times.”

“It’s been long enough since I read it that it’ll be like I haven’t before.” She set down a handful of different tools. “A ball peen hammer, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and  _tin snips_. I’ve got a pair of wire cutters, too, but they’re probably too rusty to make  _immediate_  use of for their intended function.” Reaching under the counter, she produced a book of her own and slid it toward him. “Twenty bucks and your book, for these four tools and  _my_  book? Mmh?”

“Kerouac’s  _On the Road_.” The ex-vaultie raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you might enjoy the irony of it,” she admitted. “So do we have a deal?” When he hesitated, she raised an attentive finger and dog-eared their transaction. A brief rummage yielded a piece of leather armor--a right shoulder piece. “How about now? Keep that arm in one piece a little longer.”

“You’re a real comedian, Miss Dais’. Sure thing.” Again, he walked away feeling slightly more useful for the exchange.

“My pleasure.”

“Oh, uh. I noticed it last night but I know it was late. Is it all right if I use your sewing machine? My hood is coming unraveled. Duct tape only holds so long, I guess.”

“Help yourself. I let everybody here use it. Most people don’t leave it how it was before they used it,” she insinuated with a pleasant aggression and a smile.

“I’ll be sure to clean up afterward,” he assured.

The book went into his bag with his vault suit, the tin snips and pliers into his hip pockets, and the hammer into the tool loop at the side seam of his thigh. He set the armor on the sewing table while he worked on the hood. It didn’t come out perfect, but it didn’t have to. The article of clothing had become a source of comfort for him in the past week, and he didn’t want it coming apart any faster than it would just for sake of unfinished edges. Once it was repaired, he unzipped his jumpsuit to slip it back into the neckline; then, he slipped the slim pauldron armor up onto his bare shoulder and fastened it, and zipped back up.

“I didn’t expect it to be comfortable,” he commented, patting the armor through the thick utility fabric. He fished his gloves out of his duffel, and beat the daylight out of them on the side of the table to get the material flexible again.

“If you survive the errand Hancock has for you, I’ve got one of my own to send you on. In case you needed one more thing to remind yourself to survive out there.” Daisy winked at him when he glanced up.

“Guess I’ll have to wait to find out,” he mumbled when she didn’t elaborate.

“Don’t read that book all in one sitting, if you can help it,” she suggested, watching him use her broom and dustpan to pick up after his mud-and-blood fit and deposit it in front of the store. When he came back inside and returned it readily, she added, “Reads best if you break it up over a week or so. At least, in my experience.”

“I’ll let you know how I liked it when I get back in town,” Galen ribbed, grinning wide at her as he shouldered his duffel again and walked off to exit town again.

Maybe when he returned, he’d have cause to pay a visit to The Third Rail.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brief animal death tw early on.

As Geek stepped foot outside Goodneighbor, he opted not to retrace his steps. Standing before the neon signs which had directed him to the town, going left would take him back toward Gunners and super mutants, depending on which way he turned the next block down. He hadn’t noticed before that the street continued north, considering the urgency he’d had in finding shelter--and, well, the blazing neon arrows drawing his attention the other way down the street. Favoring that path, he moved northward in the hopes the debris in the street and the toppled bus across the next intersection would be the worst of his conflict going to North End. What steeled him most in his venture was the confidence that he could reliably say he finally had a place which would welcome his return.

He trodded along, scaling the mixture of skyscraper rubble and windblown downtown garbage, grateful for the tread to his work boots. He hadn’t even gotten to the bus before two wild dogs had come up behind him and cornered him. One had gone for his leg, successfully biting nothing because it nabbed the calf-height boot leather, but the other had rounded to in front of him once the first had him distracted. He kicked the first in the snout once he shook it loose, then grabbed for his bladed knuckleduster and knife, impulsively deciding this was a good time to try his skill at using blades in a fight. With the duster, he could at least fall back on his kickboxing practice.

The second mongrel jumped him once the first recovered and had resumed circling him, and he jammed his knife up in its belly, blocking its jaws with his left forearm. Its guttural yelp curled in on itself when its snout and teeth met the steel case of his Pipboy, and it crumpled furiously. The fatal injury of the second dog enraged the first, and it lunged at his legs again, trying to down him. He buckled from the sheer jaw pressure it exerted, but when it pounced atop him, he managed to punch it squarely across the face, slicing it across the jaw and throat and cracking the skull. As the second died at his feet, he checked the first, and sighed in relief when both lay still. His mind eased itself through the act of resting the two bodies as comfortably as he could at the sidewalk, close to the building.

As he tackled the bus, he put up his knife but not his knuckles, unsure what might await him on the other side. But, when he stood atop its side, he noticed there was a bookstore to the right corner of the intersection. Immediately he thought of Daisy and let himself inside. Relieved to find no immediate signs of life, hostile or otherwise, he put away his weapons and wandered the remains of the Old Corner Bookstore with the first genuine childlike curiosity he’d felt in a while. Even the heavy musk of mildew and dust couldn’t disguise the sweetness of thick biblichor as he passed by the picketed balustrade dividing the cash counter from the front entryway. The second story had mostly caved into the first, but enough still remained to be of singular comfort to him.

Books posed a particular arcane fetish for him. In the past, it had been their power to transport him anywhere except Vault 82; now, however, they felt like some gateway to kindling a social life beyond it. He simply felt  _more_ , safer, with a portal away from all of this, possessing a book. He’d read  _The Time Machine_  one time too many, he’d felt ever since finding that copy of it, and inadvertently summoned his fate as this mutated man out of time.  _It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble._  That passage haunted him, even now, held power over him he could hardly echo.

It damned him.

Browsing the rows of ramshackle shelves, he found many heavily deteriorated books and periodicals, but did manage to find two books that seemed like they wouldn’t entirely fall apart upon being read. They were both textbooks--one for learning German, and the other for algebra. He pocketed the contents of the registers at the front, as well as about fifteen magazines, the two textbooks, and a cookbook that was still half-salvageable. Most of the ingredients were no longer available, he imagined, but he figured somebody creative might make use of it. Reminded by the cookbook that he had not eaten breakfast, he lingered in the bookstore for a late lunch. He climbed atop one of the bookshelves nearest the mound of story-fallen debris and dismantled the rotary telephone he found at besides the registers, making a meal of its bromine-saturated wafers and wires. Cracking the brittle cellulite casing apart with his pliers permitted him small enough pieces as to leave no discards.

As he continued north on the street, he wondered for the first time exactly what it was he was looking for with these Railroad folks. What kind of activity was  _unusual_  in this post-apocalyptic landscape that had replaced Boston? He regretted not asking for Hancock to elaborate. Super mutants and raiders weren’t unusual, so would another sane settlement in North End have been unusual? Ultimately, he rationalized that he was looking for buildings that didn’t look occupied.

The next notable junction was Haymarket Square. From afar Galen could tell these were raiders, not settlers, occupying the site he recalled as tragically historic. It felt nearly ironic for raiders to have taken the site of labor riots that had been fueled by some of the earliest twinges the States had felt of communist sentimentality. He committed to dropping his hood and playing up the xenophobia his complexion garnered him. It had worked on even Gunners, so why not? Working himself up into a glassy-eyed, drooling mess, he raked his jumpsuit half-open and walked slowly through the network of guard towers connected by catwalks across the span of the entire block and intersection.

“The fuck-- the fuck was that,” he heard at a distance. “Think you can get away that easy?” “Somethin’s not right with that fucker.” Galen flinched at the sound of a single warning shot. “Why’s he  _pink_?” “Hey asshole, where ya goin’?”

He stopped and stood there a moment, wavering in place, and glanced slowly up to the source of the last voice while retaining the death in his slackjaw face. After making eye contact with three wasteland delinquents who liked to have shat their pants, he kept moving, internalizing the revelry that his bluff seemed to be working.

“THAT’S RIGHT YOU KEEP MOVIN’.” “Holy shit I do not even want to know what’s wrong with that thing.” “Don’t waste your bullets on it unless it decides to stay longer than it has to. I don’t want that thing’s dead body contaminatin’ the rat maze.” “Shit it looks contagious.”

By the time he was too far away for them to be unintelligible, he somehow felt disappointed that the success was finite. Once he was out of both earshot and sight, he collapsed into crying tears laughing, only to notice he’d gotten a cramp in his jaw and groaned through his seeming interminable giggles. Glancing up from where he’d pretty much had to lay down in the street to get over himself, he wiped the moisture from his face with a wheeze and saw he’d come across a gym.

Stepping inside, Galen found a boxing ring in the center, with both folding seating and training equipment satellite to it. The unmistakable stink of too-old human sweat permeated the whole place. A tool caddy lay behind the Nuka Cola machine, and he couldn’t tell if the vending machine had been being serviced or broken into in its state of disrepair. He reached in and grabbed a soda from it, and cracked it open once he was confident that again he was alone, using the flat beverage to wash down the various tools from the caddy he’d also looted for a snack. He didn’t much mind that it had lost its carbonation, unable to remember the last time he’d even Had a Nuke. He remembered to put the cap in his duffel, away from his absent appetite, hoping to begin piling up a fund again. It had always been strange to him, that this canvas of society had favored  _bottle caps_ for their form of currency, but he never found reason much to question it. Where government had failed, the staying iconography of Nuka Cola seemed to hold true even now.

Beside the radiator at the front lay a few bottles of Buffout, which he gladly added to his sack, and he chuckled picking up a right-handed boxing glove off the floor to put it on. He set down his bottle on the radiator and shuffled up to the pale boxing bag still chained to the ceiling in the far corner. With a raised, mused brow he proceeded to take a few de-stress swings at the thing.

 _Stomach doesn’t hurt anymore after I eat,_  he pondered, playing at the thing.  _Everything feels so heavy, though. Can’t tell if it’s emotional or literal. Seems like my body’s handlin’ it pretty well so far, though, to commit to this junk diet._ A sweeping kick inadvertently dislodged it from its fixture and it slammed to the ground, its seams splitting and spewing sawdust, eliciting a chuckle. The pink dreg knew it hadn’t been a matter of not knowing his own strength, but still he found humor in it. He sniffed dryly, mind drifting back to how Diamond City had thought he was a synth, and he sat on one of the folding chairs and dug out the holotape again to re-listen.

 _Synths. What a boogeyman. They look just like a real human._ Nothing like KL-E-O, he figured, if Diamond City had thought he could be one. Slag, it made him mad to know these living things were being created and treated as anything but living. Yet, he squirmed to think something not remotely human could pass for one, messed with his confidence in knowing whom he was dealing with. What were they capable of, with such a level of subterfuge? Had he met any and not been the wiser? He quashed his racing mind before he let himself start trying to speculate just how much of their guts were machine.

Thinking back on his takeaway of Diamond City, he both softened to the doctors’ verdicts and hardened on how he’d been treated. The food paste being pure plastic in nature. There being no signs of addiction, withdrawals, or conventional poisoning. The fact he’d been managing just fine eating wasteland garbage in lieu of food supplies, as Duff had suggested he try. Just exactly what was happening to him? Was it happening to his siblings and the others at the vault, too? Even if he could find answers, or some nebulous concept of a solution or cure, he doubted Vault 82 would take him back in. He hadn’t written them off, but he certainly felt like they’d done so of him. Just like most everyone he’d so far encountered above ground. Thinking again of Goodneighbor returned his smile.

In the opposite corner was a fenestrated office. He broke the wire-reinforced glass of the door with his mallet-knuckles and reached inside to let himself in. Rifling through the desk and cabinets yielded him further chems: Two Stimpacks and a syringe of Psycho. He’d heard of Psycho before the war, but thought it had only been military issue. Briefly he wondered to himself how such a thing could have gotten here, especially during the chem rations plaguing the Commonwealth during wartime, but he quickly reminded himself he’d just found a solid supply of Buffout in the same place. They definitely held doped fights here. In the desk he also found a roll of hand wrap tape and grinned like an idiot. Before leaving, he wrapped both hands, and stuffed all the chems, rocket-shaped glass soda bottle, and the boxing glove into his duffel.

It wasn’t completely clear where he was, so he used his Pipboy to continue moving north. To his right was a church, and his surroundings were a mixture of restaurants and store fronts. He got to the paved shoreline of the Charles River before stopping again to assess his location. In the late afternoon light, he noticed a heavy metal door still standing despite the rest of the two-story building having mostly fallen away to the elements of time. His head fell to one side, and he squinted oddly at it. By all accounts, it should have felt nothing out of the ordinary, but there was no handle on it. Upon closer inspection, it looked to bear fresh tool marks, as though there had been a handle up until very recently. He gave the door a test push, and when he could hear chains strain on the other side, he was convinced this was the lead he’d sought. A hard butt with his right leather-clad shoulder didn’t budge the thing, and he paced to either side of the decaying building, thinking.

Galen looked up to see there was a fire escape scaling the side of the building next to it. By his estimates, he could definitely clear jumps between it and this building. Following through with the instinctual impulse, he got to the roof to find scaffolding joined the rooftops, facilitating his infiltration scheme. It took him three rooftops in a circle before he could make the jump into the target building lacking a roof. A rolling jump of adrenaline tumbled him headlong into a metal desk and he grunted. If they hadn’t heard him by then, they were either deaf or not home. Once he’d gotten his bearings again, he stood and rifled through the desk out of habit, finding a few fountain pens which he pocketed. The stairs had fallen apart completely, and the only way down was hopping to ground floor. Fortunately, half of the second story floor had fallen out at a slope, and he was able to soften his descent by taking it with another roll.

He wheezed a bit and looked around the ground floor. There was a second door opposite the first, which seemed to lead nowhere like the first, so he approached the chained door to remove them from the inside. Before his mind could run wild with feeling like he’d gotten himself trapped, he found the muzzle of a hulking minigun in the small of his back and froze. Several pairs of footsteps came up behind him, and he quickly understood the other door had, in fact, gone somewhere.


	14. Chapter 14

“Hey there,” a male voice chirped from behind and off to the side of Galen. “Whatcha think you’re doin’ there?”

Galen heard the source of the voice cock a rifle, and raised his gloved hands slightly above shoulder height.

“Can we get the gat outta my spine?” he replied shakily. “I don’t think so great when threatened.”

“Funny how that works,” a deep female voice remarked. The arrangement didn’t change. “Answer the question, and then we’ll determine where we stand.”

“I know the tape said you’d come find me, but I couldn’t help myself.” A membranous laugh trembled out of him. He knew a minigun could unload at least a hundred bullets a minute into him, and that was even without knowing what other weapons the rest of them had aimed at him. “Trick or treat…?”

“You have one of our holotapes?” the woman replied. It was then Galen could tell it had been her voice on the recording. “Just what exactly do you think you stand to gain from joining our cause?”

“I don’t stand to gain much of anything, besides understanding what y'all are about. Y'seem like… real respectable folks and all. I didn’t expect t'find y'all’s front door and startle ya like this.”

“What’s startling is your complexion, my friend,” the male interjected. “You are a LONG way from home. You stick out like the Red Seat. I’ve got a hunch you’ve got the potential to be just as significant.”

“You’ve got Intel on him, Deacon? Come on with it.”

“If borders were still enforced by anything these days, he’s from as far South of the Commonwealth as you can go and still be within it. Further West than the Glowing Sea. The folks from Vault 82 are all pink like that. Dez, you should’ve seen him jump that super mutant with his fists. I don’t know what they’ve been feeding him, but he went barehanded against  _ten_  of those brutes and only came out with a broken arm.”

“I’m from Jersey, if y'wanna go  _way_  back. …I had a feelin’ people been watching me a while now. I really could'a used y'help at the library. If you’re any good with that gun, anyway.” Galen didn’t know whether to argue with this man’s embellishment, unsure as to the reason for it.

“Taunting folks with multiple guns aimed at you,” a third voice warned, indicating the bearer of the minigun was also a woman. “Even if you are as strong and resourceful as Deacon’s saying you are, you sure are a bright one.”

“Hey now, I got every right t'be mad. I came up here to scout y'all out, but y'all been spyin’ on me even longer. Some help y'all are to the Commonwealth, if all you’re doing is rubber neck.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” Dez stated. “We are the Railroad, the last bastion for Synths escaping the Institute. What we do, we cannot afford to do under the public eye. You would not have seen all we’re doing for the Commonwealth, unless we weren’t doing our job.”

“Come on, give him a chance,” Deacon vied. “I can promise you he’s not going to be any use to us full of bullets. We need all the allies we can get, after…”

“Are you vouching for him?” Dez asked.

“The folks of Diamond City kicked him out because they thought he was a Synth. They’d never seen a pink Vault dweller before, I guess. He knows firsthand what that kind of treatment is like, regardless of whether he is one. And have I mentioned how good he is in a fight? I’m not usually all that impressed unless there’s guns involved, but–”

“–Before we go any further,” Dez snapped toward Galen, getting short with her information guy. “Who the hell sent you?”

“If I said that was classified, I’d get more fulla lead than usual, wouldn’t I?” When his joke fell on deaf ears, Galen sighed. “I came up here from Goodneighbor. The mayor wants to make sure he can trust your activities so close to the town. Now can we please get the gun offa me?”

“Hancock, the ghoul rebel,” Deacon told her. “If he trusts this guy with recon as to the safety of his town, I definitely think we can trust him too.”

“We really don’t have the time or resources right now to train a new agent.” When Galen shifted the weight of his stance, Dez cleared her throat and the other woman took a few sweeping steps away from Galen. “That is, if you’re even interested in being recruited.”

The pink captive slowly turned around, hands still up, and he leaned against the walls beside the door. Four of them. Deacon was bald, with sunglasses and a white shirt sleeve dress shirt. Dez was a redhead in plaid and faded yellow. The other woman had a darker complexion and bright white hair, and heavy ballistics fatigues. The fourth figure was a second man, in a press cap and postman uniform. Despite the several feet of space they’d given him, they still all had their weapons on him.

“Who are you people, exactly?”

“I’m Desdemona, and I’m the leader of the Railroad. And Deacon here is suggesting we trust you. You wanted to arrange this meeting, so tell me: You know what Synths are, right?”

“I know of them. …Not a clue."

“The Institute created them. Half man, half machine. Somewhere along the line they ceased to be simply constructs and they think, feel, and behave just as you and I do. The Institute treats Synths as property. As tools.”

“…That sounds an awful lot like slavery.”

“Exactly. So we seek to free Synths from their bondage. Give them a chance at living. Now I have a question for you, the only question that matters: Would you put your life on the line for your fellow man, even if he were a Synth?”

“Considering I don’t even know whether I’ve even met one since coming up top, I don’t see there being much difference at all between a real man and a fake one. Though, considering they can think and feel just like a real man… I imagine they can be the enemy just like one. If they’re on our side, yeah, in a heartbeat. But from what I’ve heard of the Institute, if they’re workin’ for them…”

“Trust me, we have very deep Intel on the people we’re saving. They want saving, and they need our help to get out of there.”

“Can’t say I blame them… People keep sayin’ Synths replace people like doppelgangers. That… ain’t y'all findin’ them a safe house, right? The Institute ain’t gettin’ credit for something y'all did?”

“The audacity–!” The white haired woman spat in disgust.

“Glory, calm down. We aren’t about image, so it’s easy for an outsider to jump to… abominable conclusions. We don’t kill except in defense, and we certainly don’t abduct anyone. A human life is equal to a Synth’s, and we do everything we can to pave the way for the foundation of that equality. From the sound of it, we’re of like mind, but you’d need persuading were you to want to join.”

“We’re bein’ honest here? I’m real lost, in just about every way. Runnin’ this errand for the mayor was the first sense of direction I’ve had in I don’t know how long. If y'all can give my life meaning again, I’d owe you service. And I’m not just sayin’ that cause y'all got a half dozen guns pointed at me.”

Desdemona softened, remaining stern as she waived her agents to stand down.

“While we can’t start you on training to become an agent right away, there’s plenty of other ways you can contribute. …Don’t make me regret this, but follow us.”


	15. Chapter 15

“God, Geek, you’ve got a curse with timing, you know that?” Hancock leaned hard into the back of the couch and rubbed his temples with one hand, the other on a wine bottle. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see ya, but it’s been chaos since the moment I sent you off on your little errand. ...Speaking of which, how did all that go? You’re certainly back faster’n I expected. Hope that doesn’t mean you’re comin’ back empty handed.”

“Besides the walk to and back, it really didn’t take much,” Galen replied quietly, sitting on the couch beside him. “I didn’t have to find them. They found me. ...Where’s your bodyguard?”

“You missed a goddamn shit show.” The colonially dressed ghoul slammed back a third of the bottle and grunted once he’d taken a breath. “Hopefully it’s all blown over finally. Fahr’s alive, if only barely. She’ll be fine.” When Galen looked on expectantly, Hancock offered the bottle, but Galen waved it off.

“I, no, that’s not it. I just. I’m worried what happened, is all. Did Goodneighbor get attacked by raiders or something?” He settled in a little better, setting his duffel on the ground under his feet.

“Before you, last time I saw a vault dweller was over a year ago. And now two have blown through here in a single week. That little shit... You know, I don’t blame him, to be fair. I feel completely accountable for everything that happened. No, y’know what? Y'want story time? I’ll tell you what happened, but first things first. I’m payin’ ya for the scoop on North End.”

Galen nodded, lips tight.

“They’re legit, the Railroad. The Institute crafts synths to use them for slaves, and the Railroad is like, well. You know your history, yeah? I’d imagine somebody wearin’ John Hancock’s getup would know a thing or two about prewar stuff. Pretty sure they call themselves that after the Underground Railroad. They’re all about smuggling escapees outta the Institute and gettin’ ‘em someplace safe. Away from the Institute, and away from the bigots who think that because synths were created to serve some supervillain empire, that the synths themselves are evil by design. Y’know, I will take y’up on that.”

He motioned for the bottle, and the mayor shared. After a solid swig, the dreg passed it back to him.

“I said they found me?” Galen kept on. “Apparently I’m not just a sore thumb stickin’ out sideways around here, I’ve got a goddamn spotlight on me. They had their eye on me since I got outta Diamond City. And... they want me to sign on with ‘em. I kinda want to. Nobody, no thing, deserves t’be enslaved. That’s a cause I can get behind. They know you sent me to scout ‘em out, and they sent me back with reassurance they have no intention of embroilin’ you, your town, or its people, in their dirty work. Not without ‘em also signin’ on, provin’ they’re on board black-n’-white about it all. No innocent blood shed on their watch, an’ all that.”

“Respectable work they’re doin'.” Finishing off the bottle, Hancock put it down on the coffee table with an elevated brow and heavy lids. He reached for his cigarette case and lit one up, flicking the extinguished match into the ashtray. “Y’say y’wanna join ‘em? What’s stoppin’ ya?”

Any ease left in Galen’s face drained right out of him.

“I came East lookin’ for answers about what might be wrong with the equipment at my vault. Bein’ pink ain’t rosy. My time up top just keeps rackin’ up red flags over symptoms an’ details we all just sorta accepted as normal. Time got to be a blur, and all we knew was what we were experiencing. I’m sure for most of us, it’s been like this so long we’ve forgotten it wasn’t always like this. Anyway, I’m outta places I’d know where to look for information, but really I’ve all but given up anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I care what happens to ‘em, but I’m positive they’d cut their noses off just t’spite me at this point, even if I had a way to fix all this.” After a moment the turn of phrase had marinated, and he straightened. “Bad choice of words.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Hancock murmured, grinning genuinely a moment. “You’re really pulled every which way, aren’t ya?”

“It sounds horrible, but I’m just lookin’ for a way for me t’survive this... I wanna be in the pink, not just... Yeah. Can I bum a smoke off ya, in exchange for playin’ y’couch psychiatrist?”

“--Sure.” Picking up the case again, Hancock produced a second cigarette and lit it off the cherry of his own, then he handed it over. As he spoke, he gesticulated with his cigarette not unlike an implement. “This classy lil’ tricorner hat’s gettin’ kinda heavy, man. That other vaultie I mentioned? Showed up a few hours after you left. Scrawny little creep with a Handy. Jamjar glasses and a bad limp. Finn, one of my best guards, decides to get friendly with the guy in the worst way, just because Finn doesn’t like how I’m running things and was tryin’ t’put his foot down wherever he could stomp it. Finn an’ I get into a  _disagreement_ , and I had to put him in the dirt over it to protect the guy.

“I thought I had a bead on everybody in my town, knew where I stood. Have I become a tyrant? Finn wasn’t the only one who’s actin’ like it.” Hancock shut his eyes, took a long drag off his cigarette, and paused on his head space, holding the smoke in for a moment before letting it out his nose-less nostrils. His head lolled onto the back of the couch, his hand drooping off the arm of it. “That little shit wasn’t even in my town a full twenty-four hours before another of my folks had him tricked into helpin’ her breakin’ into my strong room. All hell broke loose. There was... collateral. Fahr was just doin’ her job, and it almost got her killed. Vaultie’s got some serious debt racked up, if he can’t get back the shit he helped Bobbi steal from me. And something along the lines of a fine for critically wounding my second-in-command.”

A short silence followed.

“I get that you’re pissed,” Galen started, puffing away as he leaned forward onto his knees. “But didn’t you just describe that other vaultie as a scrawny, decrepit nerd? If he had the wool pulled over him by this Bobbi, you really think he’d be capable of coercin’ her t'cough it back up?”

“Oh, it ain’t about him makin’ recompense. It’s about makin’ him sweat. If he can get that loot back from her, he’s earned it. But what’s got me is, Bobbi thinks  _I_  earned her makin’ me for a mark. I had a job done on me. I’m getting too hunkered into my laurels. I’m goin’ crazy inside my head. I’ve gotta. I’ve gotta get outta town. Blow off some steam, sharpen the ol’ killer instinct.”

“...Funny thing, that timing. I finished the part of the story you asked me to fish for, but there’s one more thing. In order to join on the Railroad, I have to do a job for them. Prove my aptitude or somethin’ like that. An’ I’m kinda wary to go alone. The guy I’ve gotta meet with is the one I think’s been tailing me the past week, and he’s kinda... weird.” He squinted and shook his head, and swallowed his filter without snuffing it. With his head collected, he made eye contact with the mayor. “You wanna get outta town. I  _gotta_  get outta town. I’d love it if y’came with me.”

Hancock shot up and slapped his knees, then stood animatedly. His face lit up, and he wagged his free hand at Galen while he finished off his cigarette.

“You. I knew I liked you. It’s settled. We stock up and head out ASAP. I gotta bow to the formality of a speech before all that, though. I owe my people that much. But they can hold their own while I duck off with ya. They’ve got Fahr, once she’s a hundred percent again. This little job shouldn’t take too long, should it?”

“It’s out by the old Corvega plant,” Galen replied. The mayor’s intensity was catching, and a strange smile crossed the pink dreg’s face. “You’re good people, Hancock.”

“By the smile of Heaven, I am a free and independent man,” he grinned, tipping his hat toward him over his shoulder as he ducked out the balcony door at the end of the room.


	16. Chapter 16

Hancock had paid Geek entirely in caps for the reconnaissance task, a first for the pink ex-vault dweller. He’d known the  _Commonwealth_  now used caps, but up until that point they’d always been a matter of supplementary funds for bartering. The two kicked around Goodneighbor for just over two days while Hancock ensured his house was in the best order it could be, and Geek... well, he started warming to being called that.

He bought himself a full set of sturdy leather armor which Daisy offered for sale, and reinforced the whole thing with a few extra layers of fabric inside, adding as many pockets as he could, wherever they’d be comfortable against his skin. Anything could be useful now in the wastes, he reasoned. Especially as the landscape shifted to grey the definition of edible. Besides, this way he could leave the duffel behind, and rely more upon himself. A few extra pockets inside his jumpsuit didn’t hurt, either.

 _You’re gonna want a gun_ , Geek remembered the mayor commenting before the two parted to wrap up business in the area.  _Even if y’don’t use it, you’re gonna want to bring one. And make sure you clean Daisy outta bobby pins. No tellin’ what trouble we’ll end up getting into._ An odd laundry list, for sure, but he heeded the suggestions, and in addition to seven snippets of crimped wire, he also nabbed a .44 bull barrel pistol and two boxes of bullets. At the very least, they’d be emergency rations if they found themselves in a spot where food for him was scarce. He kept the bobby pins in a pocket he’d put in the side of his left boot, as far away from his absent appetite as he could manage. The fistful of caps he had left after upgrading his attire and arms went in his zippered thigh cargo pocket, to the same effect. The only thing he purchased for food rations was the lone carton of shortening Daisy had left. She adored that he was making such use of the  _Is It Food or Not?_  section of her shelves of stock. He hadn’t yet started reading the book she’d given him, but when she asked, he insisted he’d have the time for it while he and the mayor were away for a week or two.

When he and the mayor were to head out, Hancock did not port the crushed red velvet coat, or tricorner cap. Instead now wearing a tailored black leather road jacket and jeans, the hairless ghoul strode up to Geek, who’d been lingering with a bottle of whiskey in the Third Rail, waiting up on him. It was a dead time between performances, the dusty subway air filled only with the sounds of quiet chatter and a faint radio from the VIP lounge in the back.

“So we gonna get this show on the road?” the ghoul smirked, glancing furtively at him. Geek gave him a sly look and got up, taking the half-finished fifth with him.

“Let’s do it,” he affirmed, slurring a bit as the two ascended the stairs to exit the subway and skip town.

The pink Pinoy couldn’t much believe the mayor himself had eagerly agreed to travel with him. And he’d thought the historical attire had suited him well. The sweat was hard to hide as they walked north along the front face of the town.

“Two options,” Hancock remarked as they got to the first intersection, the one with the neon signs. “You feel like a lotta raiders, or a handful of Gunners?” He’d casually pulled out a hunting rifle from his jacket, eyeing the western route.

“I got through Haymarket Square all right, but seems you think risking the Gunner attention is warranted.”

“I tend to favor cutting in front of Mass Fusion whenever I leave out. Half the time, there’s not even anybody on guard. They’re too cocky about having occupied the plant. They haven’t even been bright enough to cut off our power supply lines from it, either.”

So they took that route, cutting left, then immediately right. The piles of sandbag walls still fortified the front entrance as before, as well as a few appropriated military green ballistics screens, vandalized in white with the grotesque skull the Gunners bore as their insignia. One pair of these screens blocked off the first left turn, but a high wall of sandbags as well as the gut of a rusted out car blockaded the next intersection. As Hancock had told, there was no one on duty out front of the nuclear facility as they passed through: merely an untended lantern and a miscellany of weather-rotted patio furniture.

“See? What’d I tell ya,” Hancock remarked quietly, trying to make his mind up which way to go from there. The ghoul’s dark, scleric eyes were hiding something, but Geek couldn’t tell what it might be, though he figured any paranoia must have been the whiskey he still nursed. “Here, let’s go left.”

Doing so, Geek walked along with him, the bottle empty by that point. Out of habit, he deposited in the next rubbish bin he crossed. His face screwed up, and he proceeded to fake that he’d intended to rummage through it for anything useful. Effectively he traded out the glass for four tin cans, which he stomped flat and added to a chest pocket for later. Hancock simply stood nearby and observed, badly hiding his amusement at his inebriated travel partner.

“Left here again,” Hancock called out after a few blocks. He hoped Geek was drunk enough not to notice they were now headed south, when the meetup location Deacon had provided Geek had been northwest of Lexington. "You’re sure this isn’t as time sensitive as it sounds.”

Now at the paved walkway along the shore of the River Charles, they approached a corner with a number of cast iron lamp posts, and a bricked embankment. The rotted-out skyscrapers imposed them to the left, the shadow of the Route 2 overpass to the right. A low fog had started to set in over the waterway, creeping up along the cobbled pavement.

“He told me he’ll wait for me until the end of the week,” Geek insisted. “We don’t gotta run the whole way, I swear.”

“Left here,” Hancock guided once more, following the side street in past the lamp posts. They passed several skeletons of automobiles, no longer more than rust. With one that had once been a van to their right, an eighteen-wheeler just ahead of them, having trapped itself in the perpendicular dead end side street. Hancock stopped before the multi-storied blue business building, and sat in the patio chair directly outside it, pulling out a flask to observe Geek while he whet his lips with something.

“Y’need t’stop already?” Geek wondered, looking around slowly. “That, that’s ok.” He sat on the wooden bench opposite the building, and took out a flattened can to snip it into strips for a snack.

“It is almost cute that you have no idea where we are,” the ghoul grunted, stretching. “And here you said you’d exhausted all the places you knew where to look for answers. When you didn’t object to my detour, it was obvious to me you either hadn’t been this way before, or you really hadn’t scouted it out yet. So here we are. Boston’s Vault-Tec Regional HQ.”

As the significance soaked in, Geek looked up from his gloved hands in a daze.

“Ready up, though. I see people treat this place like a live grenade. Guess we’re going to find out why.”

Geek armed himself with both fists and they entered. The lobby had an elevator to the right, and a hallway to the left of the reception desk which seemed to have offices. Three feral ghouls jumped them not five feet into the building, lunging for their faces.

Hancock shot one right in the face and kicked it in the chest to make sure it crumpled backwards. Steadying his aim to take out a second one, he seethed, “Had to be ferals.” Then, he fired again.

Geek slammed the third ghoul in the jaw with his mallet-knuckleduster, which he’d affectionately endeared the title of  _Left Hook_ , and sent the warped and naked wretch to land near the first feral Hancock had downed. The two made a pile of the three, and Geek walked back behind the reception desk with a huff.

Most of the papers scattered around had disintegrated or plastered themselves to the surfaces where they’d rested, if they hadn’t fallen to the floor. Geek helped himself to the pumpkin candy bucket on the desk, producing from it gumdrops. He popped a few in his mouth and sucked on the tough sugar-coated chunks.

“I tend t’forget it happened right before Halloween.” He sniffed and started going through the receptionist desk drawers as well as those of the two desks back-to-back behind it, finding little actually  _on_ printed paper. A wad of ballpoint pens and a few file cabinet keys later, he nearly slipped on something in the floor. He bent down, and stood holding a yellow ball of Bakelite. “...Billiards balls?” There were several on the floor, on closer inspection. He kept all of them.

“What are you even plannin’ on doing with those?” Hancock mumbled in a dubious whimsy. “Next you’re gonna tell me you can fit your fist in your mouth.”

The only response the ghoul received as Geek wandered off down the hallway was a nonchalant, over the shoulder “You  _can’t_?”

Hancock exhaled hard out his nose with his mouth clamped shut, not sure whether Geek was joking, but he abruptly laughed it off and followed. The pink fool had come across what had been the company’s break room, outfitted with a refrigerator, seating, and several appliances, all no longer in commission. Over half the ceiling directly above it had caved in, the metallic prefab panel forming a slope one could scale to the next story. Geek already had gotten to the top of it by the time Hancock caught up, and was rummaging the various desks on the second floor.

“Do you know what we’re even lookin’ for?” the ghoul asked. “Not t’be pointed or anything, but it seems like this place is fulla nothin’ but  _junk_.”

Geek looked up from the desk he’d been rifling through, caught with his mouth full of pens. He swallowed before responding.

“You don’t know either? That’s reassuring.”

“Mmh, oh hey, a terminal.” Hancock poked his head into a side office. “Watch your step right in front of it, but maybe--” Geek joined him in the small single office, where the ghoul had sat to browse the entries on the squat-screened box of prewar technology. “...Oh, hm. It’s got a password on it. No. ...No. There it is.” Once he’d cracked into it, the tip of his tongue slipped back into his mouth, and his brow furrowed increasingly. “...The employee that worked from this office had his suspicions Vault-Tec was going to experiment on its tenants. No shit.”

“What do you mean?” Geek sat down on the desk, next to him.

“Well, I’ve heard  _stories_. Really haven’t done much Vault exploring of my own, and the one I do know anything about is 114. What happened with that one probably wasn’t any of Vault-Tec’s doin’. Money laundering kept it from getting completed, but a mob head named Skinny Malone’s got himself holed up in there right now. Might not be one hundred percent, but there’s not much defense quite like a vault door on your hideout.”

“...What kind of stories?”

“I’ve really only heard about Vault 95, but I’ve heard a helluva lot about it. And this guy’s suspicions were nail on the head.” The ghoul wagged a finger at the screen, then proceeded to read from it. “Here: ‘So we just shipped 15 cases of psycho and jet to Vault 95. Of course, that makes total sense... let's give these addicts more of what put them in this situation to begin with. Davidson says it's to force them to make the hard choice, chems or getting clean. I say it's to cause a bloodbath...’ It did  _exactly_  that. The vault didn’t die out, man--they killed each other. And here, it says they shipped  _liquid nitrogen_  to a Vault 111? ...Which vault was yours?”

“82. Why, did this employee have some kind of magic future sight about 82?” pink dreg’s face soured a bit, sobering up from the gravity of all this.

“Yeah, actually. He was incredulous noticin' the invoice for Vault 82 had half as many hydroponics rigs as were required for the population it was intended to support. ‘When I brought it to Davidson’s attention, he reassured me it was probably a typo, and if they need more, they’ll order it. He also told me that I’m not to question the Vault-Tec’s design insight again, or he’ll take disciplinary action against me. Telling me to my face that gross negligence like that is an  _oversight_. He can’t fire me if I quit first.’”

Geek sat up and tried to process what Hancock had just read him, and his face screwed up tight a moment before he glared at him.

“...No, that ain’t right. There ain’t  _any_  hydro-whatsits in my vault. Either that idiot didn’t know what he was lookin’ at, or they never arrived.”

“He seemed convinced of it.” Hancock tried to shrug off the chill Geek gave him. “These entries talk about a guy named Walter in the warehouse downstairs. Maybe he’d have the invoices?”

“I’m not sure I’m gonna like what I find,” he admitted, standing up resignedly. “Let’s get this over with and get outta here.”

Once they got downstairs, he lagged behind a bit. The next sound was a large vase exploding against the wall next to the front door of the lobby.

“Got that outta your system?” the ghoul wondered vaguely, stiff where he stood. “Least give me warning next time.”

“...Yeah. Sorry.” Geek walked ahead of him and pushed the call button on the elevator, which still functioned according to the operating light of the display panel above it. When the door opened with a ding, he ushered Hancock inside.

“No,” Hancock replied dryly, “after  _you_.” The doors shut, and the cab started on its descent. For a moment they stood in silence, arrested by myriad of gnawing. Without build or warning, Hancock produced a cigarette and planted it between Geek’s pursed lips. “You look like you could use this.”

The gesture elicited a heavy sigh, and Geek slouched against the wall of the cab to light it, falling slack.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure.” The ghoul was about to offer a light, but Geek beat him to it. The elevator dinged a second time and the doors reopened, but the two lingered while the pink one collected himself a bit better.

The lights were still operating, to their fortune, but the small concrete warehouse, owing to its being a basement, had no windows, and only a loading dock door. It smelled like death and old plastic, and the two of them flinched. Geek took his smoke with him, puffing at it limply as the two browsed the shelves for loot. He stopped and took a long hit off of it and chuckled tiredly, picking up what had gotten his attention with the cigarette between his fingers.

“Hey, Hancock, check it out. A Vault-Tec lunchbox.” He opened it, producing a whimsical party-blower sound. In it was a souvenir magnet of the Vault-Tec insignia, which he swallowed promptly. “ _Ta-dah._ ” Before he knew what hit him, he was on the polished concrete floor.

In a whirl of claws and fists, Geek knelt on top of the ghoul and used the floor to add pressure to his punches as he beat the feral ghoul’s skull against it. He recognized he’d done in the feral and caught his breath, but quickly laid in a few more punches. Then, he got up to retrieve his cigarette off the floor just under the shelving where he’d stood and put it back between his lips. He grabbed the lunchbox, too, entitled to it.

“Remind me not t’make you mad,” Hancock joked awkwardly, having been sitting across the room on a palette of toilets watching. “The dock terminal’s up there.” He pointed up the stairs to the elevated landing where the loading dock door was.

Geek sat down in the desk chair when he got up there, already beyond emotionally done with the day. He nearly flung the keyboard when it booted up to another password screen.

“I know you probably gotta hangover right now, but you gotta chill, Geek. Did you try 4, 3, 2, 1?”

“Why would that even work?” Geek muttered sarcastically, trying it anyway. When it worked, he stared in shock. “How?”

“Prewar folks were just as bright as we present day folk, wouldn’t you say?”

Another long span of quiet between them as Geek pored over the files. Hancock briefly excused himself to the facilities located to the other side of the dock door. When he came back out, he found Geek sprawled across the desk with his face mashed into its top, arms hanging off the front. He didn’t sit up when he spoke, his words muffled by his arms and the desk.

“The invoices are all labeled that everything ordered for Vault 82 arrived on site. Where the fuck did they put them.”

“The invoices could’a been doctored,” Hancock offered. “I didn’t see a thing about the incomplete vault I mentioned, in that other employee’s journal entries.”

“No, I gotta gut feelin’ that guy from upstairs was right. You confirmed he got other things right. He might’a seen the stuff about the incomplete vault but didn’t have any evidence to back up his hunch yet. Anybody smart enough to leave a business like the one this place conducted, was smart enough to make sense of all the signs somethin’ was seriously ends-up around here. Still...”

“Come on, unglue yourself from that desk and let’s get movin’. We’ll figure it out. This is just proof we ain’t done sleuthin’. ...Are you really gonna take that with you?” The peanut gallery followed Geek out once a few more terminal commands had raised the dock door for them to exit.

“I hadn’t had one since I was a kid. Dunno what I’m gonna keep in it, but supposing it’s a decent enough souvenir for this little detour you set us on.”

“Food, Geek. Y’keep food in a lunch kit.”

“Right.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning for a sex chapter. Hancock builds character through exploring sexuality, so it's totally not PWP right?

"Hey, are you all right, Hancock?"

Geek swallowed a swig of sand from his glass and draped his hand back over the top of it, mentally trying not to spill it although he could easily refill it. With a crowbar lifted from a car trunk along the way, Hancock had been prying at the boarded-up door of the single-room two-story structure on the property. The lot’s slender twin silos were for dirt and sand, Geek imagined, since they looked nothing like they'd have held grains. The earth mover suggested the former as well, though he could only speculate as to the food source of the dozen or so mole rats they'd dispatched, the lot little more than a pit of loamy sand.

The hours prior, Geek had spent hunched over an old Corvega in the lot, butchering the rats and skinning them, and he left their hides stretched over the hood and trunk of the automobile to desiccate under an even layer of sand overnight. He wasn’t about to waylay them any longer than they had already been, just to spend half a day tanning leather he could process upon returning to a settlement. Besides, there likely wasn’t enough brain matter to work the total amount of leather, so part of it would have had to wait either way. While they found a safe place on the property to stay overnight, he’d left the cuts of meat in the seat of the car. While Galen had ground away at this little salvage project, Hancock had milled around, briefly going upstairs to the other room of the building, only to come back down seemingly bored. This restlessness induced by their abrupt halt in forward travel had resulted in Hancock’s attempts to gain access to the lower room of the office building there.

"Nothin' a little chems can't fix," the ghoul replied coolly, taking in the amenities that had gotten boarded up. "Damn. I was hopin’ there’d be a cot or somethin’. Just a fancy ass desk and a file cabinet. Only upholstered thing on the lot is the cars, and a couch upstairs. And I don’t know about you, but my thrill issues draw the line at sleepin’ in an automobile when I can’t be guaranteed the engine won’t just... explode."

“Upstairs it is. Think I’d feel safer upstairs anyway, considerin’ there might be more mole rats where that came from.”

Geek took another highly textured mouthful from his glass and set it down. Then, tongue thick with sand, he looted the office space while Hancock ascended the rickety wooden stairs on the outside of the structure. Leaving behind anything useful felt like such a  _sin_. The twilight left him relying on the light of his Pipboy to scrounge. He found little besides soil samples and a box of paper clips in the drawers of the filing cabinets and escritoire. Notarized stationery among them indicated this lot was once a company which called itself Mass. Gravel  & Sand.

When he unfolded the slider of the escritoire and opened its cabinet doors, he happened on a false bottom in of one of the center drawers. Picking its lock yielded a small pistol and a thousand dollars cash in a variety of denominations. His breaths became briefly panicked, and he quietly divided the funds along all the pockets of his leather armor that he could, to hide it. A note in the hidden compartment indicated that this had been compensation for allowing a nearby anonymous manufacturer to bury its liquid wastes in MGS's pit. The threat of not knowing what kind of hazardous chemicals could be below the undisturbed surface left him wondering if that stuff was what had mutated the mole rats which lived in the tainted ground--and whether there had been multiple constituents to the dump site. He stared dully at his glass a moment, but picked it up anyway to take with him and continue nursing. He left the note on the desk space of the escritoire and folded the slider and doors back in place. With a heavy thud upstairs, he wasn't sure what Hancock was doing.

When Geek entered the upper room, he found the body of a dead raider slung over the open window, the small room lit by a lantern and the dusk from the glassless, poorly-boarded-up panes on three of the four walls. Hancock sprawled back on the couch, which from the look of it had been what had made such a noise, seeing as it was now at an odd angle halfway into the floor. The ghoul fumbled breathily with a Stimpack. Since Geek couldn't discern if it was an issue of fatigue, dexterity loss, or the severity of the injury, he didn't even ask before taking the syringe from him, and he pressed it to Hancock's sinewy throat to automate the pneumatic mechanism which injected its healing contents into him. The sigh Hancock expressed held in it a complexity of deference and delirium, and he took hold of Geek's implement-wielding hand to keep it depressed against him for the full duration of its function. An awkwardly long connection transpired before Hancock realized he was still holding his pink traveling companion's hand long after the syringe was empty, and pulled away with a husky and self-conscious grin.

"Was trying to get that done before you got up here," Hancock admitted, a bit detached. "Appreciate the help."

"It's the least I could do, considering I'm the one that slashed your back up through the jacket. Friendly fire is the worst. I know I already apologized, but..."

"Don't sweat it, my friend." He patted beside him beckoningly on the faded black leather couch cushion. "You throw a very hard punch, though, you know that? I'm impressed."

While Hancock lounged on the couch to recover, Geek went to close the door to find it off its hinges. He retrieved his meat from the car, then came back upstairs and shoved over the pair of full-length lockers. For good measure, the tool bench joined them. 

“Have you ever taken a hit off something like jet?” the ghoul wondered. “It’s such a... liberating delirium.”

“I’m pretty simple,” Geek admitted. “The only chems I’ve really touched in my life are liquor and cigarettes.” He dug out the makeshift battery from beneath the tool bench and wired it to a TV tray. “In my teen years, I did my fair share of weed.” After layering the meat on the tray, he put a second tray on top of it to trap the heat and steam that would soon build.

“Weed? Which weed?” Hancock squinted at the air, trying to figure.

“Marijuana. It was related to tobacco, I think, ‘cept it grew wild.” Geek made sure there wasn’t anything on the raider he wanted that Hancock had glossed over, then shoved her body out the window. “Probably both extinct now, sadly. They’ve both always been real good at mellowin’ me out.”

Geek finally took up Hancock’s invitation to sit beside him on the short two-seat couch, pulling out his tub of shortening from his leg cargo pocket, and a spoon. Hancock smiled strangely, watching him all this time, and took it as a good time for dinner too, producing for himself a handful of squirrel jerky in a handkerchief from one of the pockets of his jacket lining. Feeling it in ill taste, he didn’t comment on how much of a shame it was, that there were prewar chems he’d never get the opportunity to experience.

"You... always eaten like that?" the ghoul remarked. "I know the carton says it's vegetable in origin, but it's still straight grease."

"My best guess is, I ate  _straight plastic_  for two centuries in the vault. This is definitely a matter of me branchin' out my diet." Holding up a full spoon for emphasis, he downed two more scoops, then sealed the lid back on it and set it on the weather-worn wooden floor. "You've taken such interest in helpin' me out. First, extending hospitality to me back in Goodneighbor. Then, traveling with me. And taking me to the Vault-Tec offices, hoping I'd find what I came to Boston lookin' for. It's more than just rubber-necking, right? I'm not just some quirky sideshow to you?"

"Here it is." Hancock tucked the kerchief of meat back in his pocket and zipped up, and got more solemn in his demeanor. "You've told me so much about yourself already, and lemme tell ya. It's rare to see somebody not willing to accept what's handed to 'em. You want to affect change and save lives, and I genuinely admire that. And what's more, your situation with your vault... I relate more than you know."

"You're from a vault, too?" The pink Pinoy had taken out one of the billiards balls to fidget with, the burgundy-striped fifteen ball.

"Oh, no. No. Heh. From what you were tellin’ me the other day... Before I was a ghoul, I was a drifter in Goodneighbor. Still run by raiders back then, led by an asshole named Vic. They took whatever they wanted from anybody without a door to lock, including taking their frustrations and boredom out on us. Went the longest, struggling with the nerve to do anything about it. One night Vic decides to crack open a buddy of mine in the street. I was too frozen to take a stand. First it was not being able to confront my brother for evicting all the ghouls in Diamond City, giving them a death sentence to the wastelands. Then it was Vic with Leigh, and me standing by unable to do little more than watch.

"Well, I'd had enough of being a coward. Somethin' snapped in me after that, and I started going out in the city to train. Became Hancock, found his duds after waking up from the best high I've ever experienced. Led the other drifters in an ambush. Vic and his gang never saw coming. We didn't have to kill 'em. But we did. Dragged a rope around Vic's neck and threw him over the balcony of the Statehouse. The words didn't even feel like mine when they spilled outta me then: 'Of the people, for the people.' It was my inaugural address. The day I became mayor." Hancock kicked his legs up across Geek's lap and grinned at him admiringly, then shut his eyes and leaned his head on the arm of the couch. "You're out here trying to find a way to fix things for people who don't got the agency to fix it themselves. I can see myself in ya."

"Are you... propositioning me, sir?" Sarcasm was the only response Geek had to such a heavy story. Hancock choked, but remained where he lay.

"I dunno, do you  _wanna_  take that as a proposal?"

Geek flustered deep and ruddy in the face and compulsively jammed the Bakelite ball into his mouth. Though he made sounds akin to gagging on it, it was more a matter of flattening his tongue enough to get it down his throat, and he straightened his head back to force a swallow. When his head came back forward again, he ground his teeth with a faint crackling, the hinge seemingly having had to be pulled slightly out of joint to accomplish such a feat. A heavy wheeze escaped his nostrils once the ball had cleared his throat, his eyelids fluttering as he swallowed the surfeit of drool that had resulted. He'd known Hancock would see him do it, but he was still reeling over it getting the ghoul's attention so intently as it had. Wide-eyed, Hancock stared speechless for some time, having craned his neck up from where he lay to observe.

"You really are something else," he remarked, stunned. His leg twitched in Geek's lap. "If you can do  _that_ , I can only imagine what other talents you've got. You’d better watch it: that kinda thing can inspire slightly more impure thoughts than what’s typical of me. Maybe..." He licked his teeth at him, heavy-lidded. "Maybe we'll get to act on some of those?"

"So we really are... more than friends?"

"I would love the opportunity to continue becoming more and more... acquainted. I'd be lying if I said you were hard on the eyes."

"I'm sure you say that to all the dregs you tour the wastes with." Feeling a bit more brazen with Hancock having taken the words from his mouth, he pushed the ghoul's legs off his lap and slid in behind him on the couch. He guided Hancock by the shoulder to let him spoon him, and the two rested their heads on the arm of the couch, Geek throwing his arm over Hancock to pull him in nearer. The scent of acetone and salt mingled with a musky, smoky one as they lay within one another’s personal space.

"Christ, you've even got a pocket  _there_?" Hancock chuckled nasally, eagerly pressing himself up into Geek's lap. "I don't even care what all you've got in there. That feels... exceptional."

After a moment, Geek realized what he'd meant and questioned whether to correct him.

"That's... not a pocket."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

Bridging the threshold of self-consciousness, Geek simply laughed it off weakly and got more comfortable holding Hancock. It was bad enough he’d gone so long without intimate contact with another individual, but it was another entirely when that person hadn’t seen him naked before.

Cautiously, his free hand wandered to touch Hancock’s throat and collarbones. The ghoul stiffened a moment before taking the hand by the wrist. At first, Geek had thought the gesture one of halting; but instead, the ghoul removed the glove, guided the hand up back up to his throat, and suggested through application of his fingers upon Geek’s that the pink fellow press his fingers into the leathery flesh, which he did. He pressed his face against Hancock’s nape and breathed deeply of his musky skin, and from behind began to dote his parted lips along it.

Hancock stretched against Geek with a pleasured groan and pushed off the other arm of the couch with his boots for leverage to grind his backside against him. Geek responded by dragging him supine atop himself, continuing to pet and kiss at Hancock’s neck. His left hand drifted down to caress the ghoul’s denim-clad hip. The pink dreg stopped a moment.

“Are you... sure you want to...?”

“ _Abso-fucking-lutely_ ,” Hancock wheezed. He stretched and wrapped his arms around Geek’s head behind him, and arched the small of his back to leverage into Geek’s crotch a bit. “May be time to part with some of those gains, though, my friend. At least for the time being. Necking’s nice an’ all, but I don’t even know what all I’m layin’ on.  _I wanna get flesh-to-flesh._ ”

Hancock turned over and slowly unzipped the mile-long zipper of Geek’s jumpsuit, and flayed the front open to bare the leather armor pieces beneath. With a grin he occasionally glanced up at that nervous pink face, unbuckling the shoulders, then the chest plate, and then moved south to feel at the hips for the buckles to the crotch plate. Once he’d succeeded, he observed that the lower he’d gotten on Geek’s body, the more rigid his posture had become.

“You askin’ me if I’m sure about this... Are you?”

“It’s just... I wasn’t kiddin’ about the...” Geek swallowed and grabbed one of Hancock’s hands gingerly, dipping the fingers into the waistband of his underwear. “Yeah.”

Hancock took the motion as an implicit  _feel for yourself_ , and he slipped his hand down between flesh and layers of twill, leather, and cotton. The ghoul’s pitch-black eyes gradually widened as his fingertips crossed Geek’s genitals, and Geek shut his eyes tight when a second baffled hand found itself joining the first to cup him. The bouquet of cooking meat had begun to bloom up from across the room, though they were too preoccupied to notice it consciously.

“I... I can’t even get my hands around this,” the ghoul uttered, brows pressed at a delirious angle as he lay himself atop his companion. “It’s... so soft...” A finger traced a fold at the curve of the odd and massive bulge, and absently he dipped it in, finding it much deeper than he’d expected. An aroused breath escaped him, and he slumped his face into the small of Geek’s shoulder. “God, that’s  _all_  foreskin, isn’t it.”

“A lot of it,” he replied, breathing hard. Hancock placed a second finger in the fold and ventured to tease the head, if he could find it in there. “--It’s not weird, is it.” The self-consciousness got a short laugh out of the ghoul.

“Geek, I’d be surprised if every last inch of you wasn’t weird. I love weird.”

Geek took off his other glove and put them in his waist pockets, then urged Hancock to straddle him. He opened the ghoul’s leather jacket when he followed the desire, and parted the garment to admire the musculature beneath the white tee. His hands went to unbuckle Hancock’s belt, then unfasten the button-front jeans. Hancock stopped him short of pulling them down, however, this time drawing one of Geek’s hands to cup him through the denim. The pink one froze, his face poorly hiding panic.

“I, you aight?”

At first the only response was a throaty chuckle and Hancock grinding his stiffened flesh against Geek’s hand.

“Better than all right. Here, let’s get you stripped down, and we can see just how  _all right_  I am.”

The two disentangled and made a pile in the floor of their clothing. Geek left on his wife-beater and boxer-briefs. As Hancock became fully nude, all Geek could do was stare anxiously. Hancock was so...  _long_. And stiff enough as to render his slender, sinewy penis bobbing slightly with each step toward Geek he took. The ghoul came back to him and nudged him back on the couch, getting back on top of him to press his hard-on against Geek’s crotch.

“Now, how can I help you get  _your_  motor runnin’? I think I’m gonna blow my top if you’re a grow-er not a show-er. You’re  _huge_.” The ghoul let out a lyrical, ragged breath as his face fell again into Geek’s neck and chest.

“I, I don’t understand,” Geek stuttered, deep purple in the face. His head swam from stimulation. “It. I don’t get bigger.”

Rather than argue, Hancock began to trail kisses from Geek’s throat downward. Lifting the tank, he flicked his tongue over the soft but pronounced dark brown-pink nipple, and admired his defined pecs. Then, his tongue continued along the line of symmetry and traced Geek’s navel, and it grazed along Geek’s body hair as he slipped down the underwear to expose him. He stood long enough to reposition himself to slump over the arm of the couch, between Geek’s legs.

Doing so produced an enormous mound of tender, hot pink flesh. Hancock cupped Geek’s sack with both hands again, this time unrestricted by the confines of fabric, and his nose-less nostrils let out a comfortable sigh at how his fingers sank in. Even softer than the foreskin, the scrotum had to be the larger of the two parts. His hands wandered to try again to wrap around what must have been analogous to a shaft, the flesh pliant enough as to make it feasible. He squeezed and stroked at it, and Geek moaned loudly, immediately after clamping a hand over his mouth. Once sure it had been pleasure and not pain, Hancock bent down and his tongue explored the fold at the round, soft tip of the organ. It slipped inside and Geek writhed, his toes curling against the far arm of the couch as his shoulders crammed against the other. As Hancock opened his mouth wider to press his tongue in deeper, Geek thought to himself how grateful he was he’d cleaned down there that morning, unsure how that might have gone over now. Geek had no idea where to put his own hands as Hancock squeezed him and licked as deep into the opening as he could manage. When he connected with Geek’s deep-buried glans, the mutant frenzied to try to jam his own knuckles into his mouth in a futile attempt to quieten himself.

“ _Fuck me your tongue is long enough t’reach--_ ”

Quiet, prideful, the ghoul pulled away from him and chuffed a moment, a string of drool pulling between Geek’s member and his thin lips.

“You... you don’t get hard, do you?”

Geek shook his head, then threw it back dramatically in humiliation.

“No, no, that’s... that’s more than all right. It’s an understatement that I’ve got more’n enough to work with.” The ghoul resumed flicking his vaguely pointed tongue along the head of Geek’s penis, using the tip to spell poetry in circles around the inner folds of his inverted corona. The poor pink shipwreck couldn’t sit still if his little death counted on it, reduced to broken keening. “Should I keep goin’?”

“Ff-- flip around an’ shut me up first,” he groaned.

Hancock’s eyes went wide again, and he grinned drunkenly from ear to ear before complying, kneeling to either side of Geek’s neck.

“Far be it for me to deny ya. Heh heheh. I’d ask you if you thought you could handle all of me, but for once I feel that might not be an appropriate comparison.” He pressed the head of his penis against Geek’s wanting tongue, and the whole thing effortlessly slid along the base of the mutant’s tongue and down his throat. “A sword swallower’s right. Don’t choke, geez. I had a feeling you were into that-- when you gulped down that fifteen ball, but--  _hello there--_ ”

Now that his friend was sufficiently silenced as had been desired, Hancock stifled his twitching long enough to play with the flaccid mound of flesh before him. He wrapped his hands around the shaft of it again, there being so much flesh he couldn’t make out if there was any erection whatsoever at its core, and tried with much difficulty to push back the sheer quantity of foreskin. The glans peeked out ever so slightly through the thick doughnut of flesh which swathed it, and licking at it exposed left Geek clamping down his throat on him. The sudden suckling constriction buckled Hancock’s legs beneath him and he nearly fell on top of Geek. To the rhythmic suction the ghoul could hardly do much more than respond by burying his face in Geek’s foreskin hands-free, his hands groping Geek’s enormous, pliant testicles. Hancock was the first to come up for air, his face drenched in the inebriation of endorphins.

“ _I’m real close_ ,” he panted.

Pulling his hands up and down along Geek’s shaft to draw the foreskin repeatedly over the head of it resulted in Geek bucking and pulling him even deeper by gripping Hancock’s buttocks for leverage. The ghoul hollered, but recovered enough to add oral attention to the repeated stroking, taking the insistence as an unspoken  _don’t stop_. He was first to come, Geek’s throat hot and slick with ejaculate. When Geek didn’t follow suit immediately after, Hancock wondered whether his pink companion even did, considering all the other unusual things about him. Yet, he kept up, head throbbing in the afterglow high, hoping he’d eventually get some sign his friend had also gotten off. The fact Geek still clenched around the ghoul’s softening and now intensely sensitive dick suggested release had not yet occurred.

Geek came after what felt like an eternity, though not just the timing caught Hancock off guard. The amount was more than what Hancock was accustomed to, but still nowhere near what he’d expected proportionately from such massive balls. After Hancock had swallowed and laid atop him, Geek let him slip out at last. The ghoul wiped his lips clean with the back of his drunken hand, and as it wandered along Geek’s thigh, he observed the pink streak on his hand.

“You even  _come_  pink,” Hancock chuckled in a worthwhile exhaustion, nuzzling the top of the other thigh sleepily.

“You have the best butt,” Geek commented, still winded and lost inside his head as his hands petted the hard, marred cheeks. After a moment, the meaty smell in the room got through to him, and he shot up, Hancock’s legs dangling off his shoulders. “Shit!”

“--What?” Getting pushed into the couch as Geek rushed across the floor on all fours ripped Hancock out of his afterglow and he looked on as Geek pried the two dinner trays apart.

“I didn’t expect to get... caught up in anything.”

With a distracted grimace, Geek pried the charred cuts of meat off the trays to assess just how viable they might be. He flinched at the heat still trapped in the lower tray, and set them both down to fish out a utensil from his jumpsuit in the floor. A butter knife provided sufficient leverage, and he successfully divorced the mole rat chunks from their cooking surface, to let them rest in the tray he’d used as a lid. He sighed and unhooked the wires from the battery, and leaned against the baseboards behind him to lick the mixture of caramelized and charred juices from the knife.

“Caught it before it was better used for charcoal, at least.” Geek noticed Hancock eyeing him. “What?”

“Mmh, don’t mind me,” Hancock murmured through a smile, getting comfortable on the couch now that the stress had faded. “...Just admiring the view.”

“You gonna let me on that couch?” Geek smirked in a feigned chastise, poorly hiding a requited eyeful.

“Not sure there’s enough room for me and  _all of you_ ,” the ghoul playfully whined, taking up more space on purpose.

Geek tossed down the flatware on top of his pile of clothes and set the second tray back atop the other, and pounced on him, wrestling a bit to squeeze in behind him like before. Their feet dangled comfortably off the arm of the couch.

“Y’know,” Geek uttered, nearly asleep, “this kind of couch is called a ‘loveseat.’”

“Cute, Geek. Real cute.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for drug use and synth vore.

"Deacon...?”

Geek glanced the figure up and down, nearly uncertain of it. The pair had arrived under the Lexington-Concord Interchange, and found this one tatterdemalion pile of human being topped with dark glasses and a trilby.

“Ah, you brought a friend with you,” Deacon confirmed. “Sometimes three wheels make an operation run more evenly.”

“That getup is ridiculous,” Hancock muttered, unimpressed. Even without having met him before, he knew Deacon was in disguise. He’d broken out a pair of aviator shades and a red ampuole. “What kinda trouble are you intending to get into, dressed up like that? A garbage heap?”

“I call it the ‘Wasteland Scavver’ look,” Deacon replied impressively, striking a pose. Clearing his throat, he briefly changed to a husky, irate intonation. " _This is my pile of trash._  Just be glad I didn’t do one of my face-overs. Heh. Heheheh.”

“I imagine you’ve got a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, too,” Geek cracked, seconding Hancock on it being silly. “Why the getup, though?”

“I collect intel. Gotta go under the radar with folks, depending on the type of information I’m digging. As far as what trouble we’re going to be getting up to... our previous base was underneath the Slocum’s Joe here. The Institute discovered it and we didn’t have enough time to get everyone, or everything, out. We need to check with our information man before we head in preemptively, though. There’s no telling how much of a synth hotbed it still is.”

“And... where’s this information man?” Geek asked.

Deacon pointed up.

“Follow me.”

"Oh brother,” Hancock mumbled with a heavy eye-roll, following furthest behind to take a hit off the ampuole of jet.

"Who's Groucho Marx, anyway?"

The trio found a downed slope of overpass pavement and scaled it, following along the Route 2 overpass as the crumbling concrete path would permit. Peppered among the mixture of eighteen-wheelers and automobiles, as well as an abandoned tent, several ghouls tried to ambush them along the way; but, the three made quick work of them, between two guns and a knife. As they walked, Deacon indicated the various graffiti trail markers the Railroad used, as a way of teaching Geek the ropes before he’d even gotten his foot in the door. He got well-acquainted with the ring of light rays with an ‘x’ in its center, suggesting ghouls frequented the overpass.

“You take the lead here,” Deacon told him, holding Hancock back and nudging Geek to approach the figure at the cooking pot at the abrupt end of the interstate. "And whatever he says, reply  _mine is in the shop_. Trust me.”

“Why me?” Geek started, looking back over his shoulder after a moment.

“You’re gonna have t’learn this stuff sometime,” Hancock retorted with a smirk.

The two hung back behind a few yards to chew the fat over something. The trio’s presence became noticed by the lone man in plaid who tended the fire. The long-haired older man stood, both urgent and irate, his peppered whiskers nearly bristling as he spoke.

“Do you have a Geiger counter? Do you have a goddamn Geiger counter?”

“Mine... is in the shop?” Geek steeled himself not to reply that he’d eaten it.

"It's about damn time. Name's Ricky. ...I thought there was just gonna be two of ya. Who's HE?" Ironically, the man pointed at Deacon and not Hancock. "The whole lot of ya looks like a bunch of clowns, honestly. I was on the brink of a heart attack."

"I, I'm new," Deacon replied apologetically, before anyone else could. "These guys are just showing me how it's done. Pink guy here's the lead."

"Besides the getup, you all look serious in the face, so I've gotta tell you. This ain't a place to be dragging your training wheels, boy," Ricky chastised, visibly stressed. "It's crawlin' with Synths, and God knows what else."

"What can you-- tell us about the location?" Geek stuttered out, glancing startled back to Deacon, who'd put him on the spot to look the seasoned one. Why the fuck had Deacon taken the role of a greenhorn?

"They're all over the front end. Turrets and mines, too. It'd be suicide to go in headlong."

"I, thank you, Ricky," Geek said, offering a handshake to make it feel official. "Your efforts and information are invaluable."

Ricky's demeanor softened in the handshake, and he smiled through his haggard fatigue.

"I hope it helps. Really, I do. It's a thankless job for the long of it, so it means a lot to hear."

As they walked away to retrace the interstate back to how they'd merged into it, Hancock was taking in the other half of the ampuole from earlier, sighing pleasantly. Geek himself lit up a cigarette, and snarled briefly.

"Deacon, why the fuck--"

"He's not an agent," Deacon interjected, watching the drugged ghoul cautiously rather than looking to Geek. "I have to cover my steps to separate the confidentiality of cases from the individuals working it, on a need to know basis. If he knew I was in the inner circle of agents of the Railroad, he'd know the value of what we were diving for."

"--What exactly is it we're doing here?" The incredulity in Geek's voice crackled through, and he just stopped walking for a moment to focus on his cigarette. He stared out off the overpass at the forested skyline below them.

"You think I'm not telling the truth? What about our man Ricky?"

"I don't know that I have reason t'distrust him," Geek replied, exhaling sharply at the end. "On the other hand, you're making me wonder whether  _you're_ t'be trusted. Seriously. You coulda at least given me some forewarnin' before throwin' me in the fire like that."

"I suppose it's a good lesson, to take every statement with a grain of salt," Deacon suggested, glossing over the elephant among them. "Most people won’t lie without a reason to. If you can figure out why somebody would lie, it becomes so much easier to tell whether they are. I mean, he's probably telling the truth, but I'll follow your judgment call here, Boss. This is your crash course, so I'm your backup."

"Why am I startin' t'suspect you just wrangled me into doin' your dirty work, and that you got no idea what we're up against?"

"Grain of salt," Hancock echoed, unamused. The aviators concealed just how glassy his gaze was then.

"Well, going with your theory Ricky's honest, the front entry would require us going in guns blazing. But if  _that's_ not your style, there's also the back way." The postulation held in it the implicit irony that he felt like brute force seemed exactly to the pink fellow’s preference.

"Which way's easier? In your expert opinion?" The ghoul offered the ampuole to Geek, who took it and swallowed it. "Heh, rubbish bin on legs. Convenient."

"Takin’ advantage of the fact I snack under stress. Clever."

"Did you just. I had no idea jet was edible," Deacon deadpanned. "...Sake of ease is subjective. The front door is a matter of thick skin and brute force. If you trust my finesse with a keyboard, the terminals will make sneaking in the back way doable--not easy, but still doable. So what'll it be, Boss?"

"First order of business, y’stop callin' me that."

"...Right. Geek."

"Secondly: Which way has a chance encounterin' fewer Synths? Seeing as this is my first time fighting one, I'd like to even out my chances best I can."

"Back way, in my opinion, but that's no promise."

"Back way it is, then." Geek stormed off ahead of them.

"I think I trust the front way better," Hancock jabbed, taking aim at an airborne enemy only he could see. "Least we'd get inside faster, away from these things."

"You're a keeper, Mayor," Deacon remarked, astounded.

The back entrance was through the water drainage pipe, and Deacon hacked the terminal of the weed-overgrown entry to let them inside.

"It shouldn't be too rough," Deacon narrated as they walked to the first checkpoint. "It's likely mostly just Gen Ones and Twos." Geek looked to him for elaboration. "The Institute went through a few different prototype models before they got to the ones that look exactly like a human. Had to work up to that level of hubris. Depending on who you talk to in the Railroad, opinions differ as to where to draw the line between the true AI and simply being a smart robot. Some of us even get into semantics as to whether Assaultrons and even turrets have rights. There's a lot of grey area to mince in the downtime between action."

"...Be straight with me for once. What are we here for?"

"Like I said, Geek, when the Institute hit us, they hit fast and hard. You met most of the survivors already. We couldn't even pack up resources and still make it out in one piece. ...You can understand why we're so short-handed on training availability at the moment. We're here for something the Doc was cooking up. According to Dez, it’s a pivotal piece of prototype tech."

"A grocery store run, seems more like it." Deacon took Hancock's tone as a jab at the value of the recon, rather than it being fun at Geek's expense. After a moment, an easier-to-read joke slipped out of his tremulous mouth: "Shopping when you're hungry means ya pick up more than was on your list." In it, an implicit  _I know you're teetering on stress-eating anything that isn't nailed down_.

Geek muttered a forced laugh, rolling his eyes at him.

"There's probably not food supplies left, but you're welcome to all the ice cream and pickles you find," Deacon offered, hacking the next terminal. "It's not like we're leaving anybody standing when we walk out of here."

The security gate opened, and they descended the split cobblestone steps into the sewer. Deacon and Hancock still favored their guns, but in the face of an unfamiliar enemy, Geek fell back on the comfort reliability of his knuckledusters.

"Is anyone there?" they heard an artificial voice inquire.

Silently, they all armed themselves, and squared up against the single Synth. Geek's eyes went wide to see the thing was an amalgamation of wire and plastic on an exposed metal skeleton. Horror overtook him and he froze up, leaving the Synth to come across him first. The way the ocular lenses intimated lidless sockets, the fake metallic teeth... It was like a skinned human face devoid of gore. The pit of his stomach dropped even heavier.

"Shit." Hancock’s intuition snapped, and he cocked his shotgun and unloaded a pair of shells into the Synth from a short distance. When the dust settled, he walked up to Geek. "You look like you saw a ghost."

"My reflexes are just fine." Seconds later he flinched at the aftershock memory of Hancock's gunfire. "Fine."

"Mmm. A little... something to liven up the day?" Hancock surreptitiously slipped a syringe into Geek's gloved palm and looked at him slyly. Psycho. He had some in his pocket too, from the gym, but he hadn't even considered using it. The gift wasn't so much the item itself, but rather the observation that Geek might make use of it. "Help you steel your nerves a bit."

"Do you peddle candy, too, or just drugs?" Deacon joked naively. "I want a lollipop, Mister."

"Knock it off," Hancock muttered.

"Ah! a turret terminal," Deacon sidestepped, ignoring Hancock's displeasure. "Let's fire it up and give our freeloaders a nasty surprise." The two gave Deacon some time to tinker with the computer.

The next chamber of the sewer had in it multiple Synths, as Deacon predicted. Deacon held up his hand to pause their forward motion, and he held it up to an ear eager with anticipation. Sure enough, the turrets powered up and unloaded hundreds of bullets before several laser shots and a short explosion rang out. The two had been around Deacon enough to read the childish prank-like pride in his otherwise expressionless features. Hancock genuinely cracked a smirk for once at something Deacon had done, though the same couldn’t be said of Geek.

The smell of charred metal, oil smoke, and gunfire wafted down the moldy, damp corridor. The hard and angled, inorganic face of the first Synth overlaid Geek’s conscious thoughts. He glanced down to the yellow tri-component syringe in his clenched fist. In his history of chem use, such substances intended to becalm his tumultuous, anxiety-depression addled mind--but would dialing all that up to eleven instead serve him in this situation? He knew that the military had given soldiers the chem to override cowardice and increase pain tolerance, but he had no idea what to expect as to how it went about achieving that. Hancock briefly looked back to check on him, and when he was observed not having moved, the pink wreck impulsively followed through with plunging it into the underside of his jaw, shutting his eyes in the moment and not giving it a another thought.

Within seconds, the stringent injection lit his veins afire. His lip curled, and he began to drool a bit as his breathing became off-kilter. Everything was uncomfortable, and he had to find the source of it and dismantle it. Hancock noticed his companion had administered the hit and poorly hid an admiring smile, nearly proud of him for letting chems help him through this rough patch.

Grease. Gunpowder residue. Titanium alloy. Nuclear components. Geek’s senses heightened, intensifying the discomfort like a bad migraine. The spotlight in the room threw a nasty halo on the whole place, and he growled through frothing, clenched teeth. Before, the Synths’ footsteps had been nearly silent, but now he could likely pinpoint their location in this room with his eyes shut. He squinted in frustration and, trembling with distress, grunted hard.

His stomach hurt so badly. He had to fix that.

The face of the nearest Synth found itself between his hands. It cracked on the cobbled steps, over, and over. The chest plate cracked open with only a few flung punches, exposing the soft innards. Analogous to ribs, the chest of the now mangled Synth easily accommodated Geek’s ravenous mouth, and he burrowed face-first in to chew apart wire and fluid line alike, pulling them out by the teeth.

Coolant, oil, and other substances saturated his face and front as he could tell a second Synth was beneath him. There was no slaking the thirst that overtook him as he guzzled the construct dry. If he’d been outside himself in that moment, he’d have noticed himself rip out and swallow this one’s ocular lenses.

But he didn’t notice anything.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TWs: injury, talk of synth vore, drug use.

“You in there yet, brother?”

Geek groaned, cuddling up to the body next to him. The stink of petrol and plastic coated every scrap of his senses.

“--I’m awake, Hancock.”

“That's not me you’re holdin’, and it’s an understatement to say I’m glad it isn’t.”

The pink mess opened his swollen eyes and tried to process his surroundings. They were in a computer-encrusted, warehouse-sized room that very likely had been the brain and heart of the Switchboard before it had been occupied. When Geek looked to the one with whom he lay in the floor, he was met with a tangle of robotic gore. A short breath jutted out of him and he shoved it away.

“My friend, you  _ate_ the face off half the Synths we’ve encountered,” Deacon explained, visibly shaking. He’d been clearly maintaining a safe distance from Geek for some time now. “Your display spooked even me, and I’ve seen things.”

“It’d give a Deathclaw nightmares,” Hancock seconded, already having been smoking to even out his nerves. “Remind me not t’give ya more of that stuff unless we’re in a pinch. You took out every single one of ‘em on your own. We haven’t fired a round since we first stepped foot in here.”

The more Geek saw of the carnage littered around him, the more he wished he hadn’t. Smears of coolants and lubricants, shreds of wire and structure. He’d even leapt up the wall to punch down a turret that had made him mad, the dome-shaped glorified tin can now pulp on the polished concrete. If these had been humans-- He couldn’t even form the horror, and took the moment to wipe the crust of half-solidified fluids from his entire face best he could.

“You good now?” the ghoul fished, not trying to hurry his friend faster than the Psycho-induced hangover would allow. Geek sat up with a grunt.

“I will be.”

“Stay here with him,” Deacon urged, motioning with his rifle. “I’m gonna go retrieve our hidden treasure, now that Geek’s worn himself out and gotten out of the strong room.”

“Fall back a tic. Got it.”

Geek knew better than to object. Once he was sure Deacon was out of earshot, he lit up a cigarette of his own, scooting up against the metal front of one of the office desks in the middle of the room.

“I didn’t hurt either of you, did I?”

“We’re both fine. Justifiably rattled, but ah. I never said I always make the best decisions. I’m sorry that happened. That was my fault.”

“Did I at least clear it out? Make it safe to get back out?”

For a moment, Hancock focused on his smoke instead of answering directly.

“ _Oh_  yeah. No question of that. At one point you were even beating one Synth with the wreckage of another Synth.”

“...I wonder if they feel pain,” Geek blurted, glaring at one whose pseudo-skull he’d cracked open and gutted the components inside it.

“It doesn’t matter if these ones did. They were enemies, brainwashed by the Institute. Did you achieve the goal of shutting them down in the messiest way I think you could have possibly done it? Sure. But no matter the means, the end was supposed to be the same. Deacon couldn’t have retrieved that prototype without ya fumigatin’. What matters is whether you’re okay after all that.”

“I... I don’t know.” He slowly rubbed at his face with his free hand and held a squint. “To be honest, I’m not sure if I can rightly stand up. Everything is heavy. Not emotionally, literally.”

“If you actually swallowed everything you ripped off, I’m not surprised. Sorry if that comes off as bad taste.”

“Was that a goddamn pun, Hancock?” Geek kicked his foot at him.

“...An unintentional one, but at least it got you smiling.” Hancock looked at him in earnest. “I know how it’s gotta sound, but I gotta ask. This is comin’ from a place of worry... but you said all this time you’ve been feeling ill? All that...” He vaguely motioned head to toe at Geek. “That stuff ain’t... comin’ out the other end, is it.”

The gauntness of Geek’s eyes deepened in a heartbeat, to have it verbalized. For a moment, the pink dreg couldn’t look at his companion, but when he did, Hancock felt like the whole room had dropped twenty degrees.

“Did I interrupt something?” Deacon began. When the two looked up, they weren’t sure how long he’d been standing there. He’d put up his rifle at his back, and he held up a decently-sized rectangular device with one hand to demonstrate the prize. “We should get this back to Carrington. I’d planned all this time for Geek to be delivering it to him personally, to make a statement to everybody back at HQ, but... I think it’d be better if I did. Forgive me for not entrusting it to you, Geek, but I’m sure the Doc would like it back in one piece.”

“Now that ain’t  _fair._ ” Hancock smashed his cigarette out on the concrete floor and whipped up to close the gap between him and the Intel specialist. “If this ghoul had half a brain left, he’d say you were plannin’ on taking all the credit for yourself. You played us. Do you have a  _clue_  what this recon mission did to Geek? And for what? Some dumb piece of tech? Sure hope it’s worth somethin’.”

“For as understandable an impression you have of this situation is, you’ve got me wrong, Mayor. I just... don’t want what happened to all these Gen I’s and II’s to happen to this prototype. It’d make this trip for nothing.”

“Give  _me_  the prototype.” The ghoul flipped a switchblade from his back pocket and wavered it at Deacon. “I’ll make sure Geek brings it back in tact.”

“Hancock, cool it.” Geek clenched his teeth and tried to stand up, needing to defuse the argument. “I... I get it --agh.” He turned to face the desk and used it to brace himself and push upward. His stance uneven as he hunched over the desktop, he tried his best to look the part of composure. “Deacon, give the damn thing to Hancock.”

“You did earn it,” Deacon reassured dryly, having no option but to hand it over, lest he belie his motives. With it in hand, Hancock put away the knife, and Deacon’s posture loosened. “You did all the work. But you have to understand, how little of a trust exercise this has been. Geek... did all that, and I don’t think we could have stopped him if we wanted. And Hancock just pulled a knife on me, when you didn’t like that I’m shy to hand over candy to a kid who can’t keep from putting anything and everything his mouth. And what’s to say that dose of Psycho didn’t give him an addiction? The rate of that happening is... alarming, to say the least. ...Geek, you look bad. Real bad.”

“You said you had a doctor back at HQ?” Hancock started into a second cigarette. “Would that doctor be able to take a look at him? Willing to?”

“Delivering that prototype will beholden him to you, that’s for sure. And he sees a lot of strange ailments, tending to the agents after their missions.” Deacon sighed, looking on at Geek. “This does prove one thing, Boss. You are one  _hell_ of a Heavy. Dez wanted to take you on board as just another tourist--the odd jobs, the laundry lists, the errands. What a waste! You are a  _force_. Psycho only enhances qualities a body’s already got. The first impression you gave me was messy, but it was definitely impressive. I hope I get to see what you do clear-minded.”

Geek managed to turn toward them finally, sitting on the side of the desk.

“You should’a seen him mow down all those mole rats so we had a place to sleep last night.” Hancock laughed dirtily. “Took out easily a dozen of those fuckers without hardly breaking a sweat, still had the stamina after to gut, skin, and smoke ‘em all.” He exhaled smoke through the gap in his face, side-glancing suggestively at him. “He’s a freight train. Perfect Railroad material, going on merits like those.”

“Funny, you turned down mole rat chunks for breakfast this morning.” Geek flicked his cigarette butt off to the side. “Y’trust Hancock with that gadget, right?”

“I do worry he’ll try to sell it for drugs between here and North End. You’ve got a reputation, Mayor.”

Hancock read the deadpan delivery like a byline, and held up the brick-like tech in both hands and playfully narrowed his eyes at it, his cigarette loosely between his lips.

“This thing really worth anything to anyone but the Railroad? How many hits of Jet are we talkin’?”

“I know it might not be the best piece of information to disclose to present company, but the Doc does keep Jet on hand for the more shell-shocked agents.”

“Y’don’t say.” The ghoul looked over to his companion and puffed at his smoke a bit, still holding up the prototype. “Hopefully the cost of treatin’ Geek’s cheap enough that the doctor can toss a few ampuoles into the trade.”

“Good to know I’m top priority.” Geek tried to bear his full weight on both feet and stifled a flinch, starting to sweat. “--I think I’m gonna need t’take it slow gettin’ back to headquarters.”

Deacon gave him a long stare.

“You take all the time you need, Boss. If you feel as bad as you look, Carrington  _needs_  to do you a once-over. I hope you don’t mind me sticking behind with the two of you. I’m worried. And you’re right. As little good it does casting blame after the fact, it’s just as much my fault as it is Hancock’s you ended up in this mess.”

Trying to lead the way, Geek felt as though he were dragging his legs with every step he took. After a moment walking away from his traveling companions, he stopped, realizing he didn’t have recollection how any of them had gotten to the room they were in. His leg burst into a wildfire of pain and abruptly buckled under him. He narrowly kept himself from falling by steadying himself against the door frame.

“We should get outta here, and head back. ...ASAP.” He didn’t have to look down to know his lower leg had snapped. “Either of ya-- got a Stimpack?”


	20. Chapter 20

Geek's tibia and fibula had buckled in half just from bearing body weight alone. Deacon handed over a Stimpack in an instant, Hancock offering a shoulder to lean on. The words that came from the pink dreg next felt more like a demand than advice.

"D-- don't try to catch me. I think-- I think I'd hurt you more than falling d'hurt me."

"You really think you weigh enough to hurt me?" Hancock objected, feeling his pride in question with his assistance shrugged off, as far as his strength and constitution. Deacon glared at him over the top of his sunglasses.

"You just saw the kid's leg bones snap like twigs just by trying to stand up, and you're playing the tough guy." Deacon took the Stimpack from Geek when Geek couldn't balance well enough to inject the syringe into his own leg, and knelt near him. "Geek, I'm not a professional medic, but I'm at least gonna try to right the bones before applying the Stimpack. Can you take the weight off the bad leg without hurting the other?"

Geek shook his pounding head, but tried to lean harder into the wall. He took a fold of the shoulder fabric of his faded green jumpsuit in his teeth. When Deacon was sure Geek was ready for it, he firmly gripped the upper and lower parts of Geek's calf and felt out an approximate alignment. Then the pneumatic implement plunged deep in the side of his calf, the needle nestling between the two bones before administering cold regenerative serum with a hiss. Hancock disregarded the caveat and helped steady Geek against the wall to keep the weight off the healing leg while the medication took hold, but did at least keep salient footing in the event Geek needed to fall.

"...We've got plenty more, right," Geek joked, slowly testing the leg once the numbness of the chems wore off. His face had run terribly. "I feel like I'm gonna need about two hundred before we get back."

"Oh come on, now," Hancock smiled sadly, planting a fresh cigarette between Geek's lips. "You're not gonna break every bone in your body. We're gonna get you somewhere safe, and we're gonna get you better." He flicked up a match for Geek, who shakily accepted it. Anything to mask the scent of his own lapse into indiscretion.

"We'll keep you supplied with whatever aid we can provide," Deacon seconded, standing. "Just pace yourself, and we'll spot you. It's only a day's walk back from here. We can manage that."

"I'm ready whenever y'all are," Geek insisted, starting off again. Every step he took had to be small, deliberate, and prepared.

"Woah, woah there, Boss." Deacon took him gingerly by the shoulder and guided him about face. "Elevator's that way."

Arriving back at ground level was a simple matter of a short hallway, an elevator ride, and a utility stairwell. Deacon and Hancock did most of the work, dispatching the Synths and various turrets stationed within the ruins of the Slocum's Joe coffee shop as they exited the base's front face. Geek equipped himself with the bull barrel pistol for fire support, though it was mostly for emotional confidence. His eyesight wouldn't draw into focus, his smell the strongest to rely upon. He didn't use the gun for the fear of friendly fire. But he distrusted his balance, and his bodily integrity, too much to fight physically. Simply scaling the stairs had been enough exertion to ruin him.

The scent of stale coolants indicated for Geek there was a Red Rocket station to his right. A fog of distortion enervated him further. More gunfire? Ferals. His footing wasn't steady, but at any given point he never went longer than a few minutes without at least one hand guiding his shoulder. He wheezed raggedly, needing to stop regularly to recollect his breath. The rot of petrichor stuffed his nostrils, and he could feel the rain soak into his clothing.

He didn't really mind the chill. Everything was on fire, and his body felt like it was hardening all over. Leaden. Saturnine. Overencumbered by himself.

Like hearing everything from inside a glass jar, Geek could tell Deacon and Hancock quipped unintelligibly back and forth as they traveled. His ears rang numbly. The ground became uneven, and he nearly slipped from the mud as they took the river bank. His boots sank sharply in the silty mess of patchy grass as he slid, leaving deep skids in the terrain.

"I am not about to take an unscheduled bath today." Hancock grunted, narrowly letting Geek right himself rather than instinctively catching him.

The rainfall bloomed up the familiar, complex chemical smell of Mass. Gravel & Sand, and for a brief moment Geek thought he halfway had his bearings. They kept to the broken thoroughfare, passing through a prewar military checkpoint littered with overturned vehicles and guard posts.

More gunfire, though it didn't last long. Geek assumed his companions had sniped out whatever had been the threat.

"I wanna sit down." Detached but beseeching, he addressed no one in particular.

Met with muffled responses, he let them both guide him by the shoulders. But, they didn't stop him someplace where he could sit. Pushing onward, he figured they'd told him he'd only have difficulty standing again.

Night fell before he could make out a tall fortification to his left. They rounded down past an overturned eighteen-wheeler and cut across the river on a bridge beneath the overpass. The shadowed stink of this patch of the Charles, Geek had been here before. The night was unforgiving there, unable to go by much more than his companions' road familiarity in the pitch dark.

They crossed over a white-edged red line in the sidewalk. That line felt important, but Geek couldn't sufficiently verbalize it as he watched his own footsteps. The river was to their left. A dumpster to the right. He wanted to say that he should stop and eat something, that he didn't know how long it had been since he ate. Something trapped the words within him.

Concrete stairs, leading into the ruins of a building. More dull bickering. They briefly stood in place before entering a utility tunnel. Soured pipes running everywhere. Brick stairs descending, winding. A bright light pained him and he snarled to himself. They waded through water knee-deep. More stairs, and a strong red light illuminating the way. Mattresses lined one side of the tunnel, metal supply shelving the other.

A third voice joined the usual banter with a door slammed behind it. Desdemona, urgent and incredulous. Geek struggled to focus on the dialogue.

"You what!"

"We need him, Dez. But what  _he_  needs right now is for you to let us in the crypt, so Carrington can treat him. We'll tend to formalities when he's not probably rotting on the inside."

The four of them moved into the heart of the crypt then. The dull must of ancient mildew clinged to every surface. To his left, a huge, bright round source of light. To his right, a salty smell affronted him. Increasingly, the dozen or so agents in the headquarters began to mill about in a fashion as to rubberneck.

"Carrington, this guy just saved your prototype from the Switchboard," Deacon introduced. Hancock handed it over readily. "Could you maybe show him a little gratitude by assessing the toll it took on him to do it?"

Geek looked up to the figure receiving the treasure. Tall, West Asian, a white medical coat. The pink mess wheezed, and decided it was finally acceptable to simply lie down directly on the cobbled ground.

"My God. Recap everything. Don't leave out a thing."

"Don't look at me," Hancock blurted out. "All I know is what I've seen him eating. He don't really talk much."

"Don't. Don't tell me he  _ate_  things up there," another male voice interjected.

"Not now, Tom." The doctor seemed genuinely pained by the intrusion.

"I ate all kinds of things," Geek retorted pathetically at the air. "What shouldn't I have ate? The telephone? The petrol? The damn Synth parts?"

The black man in overalls was crouched near him, his soft features and strange goggles traced with light from behind. Geek's features went slack, feeling comforted by this bizarre agent moreso than the doctor somehow, despite how haunted this Tom was by his response.

"That's it. No question about it. The Institute has got in his blood. Nanites. Tiny little computerized cells. They report back to the Institute, and probably worse."

"That's... terrifying, if true." Geek shivered. The prospect this Institute was responsible for everything that had happened to him and his people chewed him to the core.

"No! There's battery acid in that serum of yours." The doctor tried to pull Tom back, but he knelt down fully to get nearer.

"Aaand some algae, and a delightful little bacterial culture. Among other things." He looked Geek firmly in the eye. "Can't nuke an omelette without irradiating some eggs. It'll fix you up. Clear it all out. ...You. You don't gotta do it. Dez says it has to stay voluntary. But I'm positive it's all those lil' nanites buzzin' around in your guts that's all the trouble. We got to burn those babies out of you. One... not so small injection, and a good nap. You won't regret it. A hard reboot to your system."

"Are you certain you don't want any legitimate medical care before you... encourage this?" Carrington could tell Geek was likeminded to Tom. "Tom is our quartermaster, not a medic."

"Ye of little faith," Tom puffed.

"...I've tried every remotely normal medical thing tryin' t'fix this," Geek muttered, letting his head fall to one side, and welcoming the cold of the stone against his cheek. "This... whatever it is. It's hell, an' I'll try anything at this point. Let's... let's give it a shot."

"Even this messed up, you're cracking puns." Hancock snorted.

Carrington could only look on in deep concern as Tom snapped up out of the floor to retrieve the serum. Brief instructions back and forth across the crypt left Hancock helping Geek out of his jumpsuit and armor, down to his underwear, then into a pair of ratty pants produced in donation by an agent. Tom drew a syringe from an old oil can, the fluid semi opaque and of uncertain coloration. Like an inoculation, it was injected into Geek's upper arm.

In an instant, Geek felt his blood curdle. As his pulse matched his panic, the spoiling raced through his veins. When it hit the chambers of his heart, everything went black with a hard jolt.

_He was running again. His siblings, Vana, Orpi, and Torber sprinted alongside him. Orpi carried their youngest sibling Ruti piggyback. Their parents were far ahead of them, trying to spur their haste. The Reds were finally bombing America, with confirmed reports of mushroom clouds in Pennsylvania and New York. Radioactive dust rolled in from all around the family as they hurried down the shore of the Blackstone Gorge from the junkyard they owned, racing to Vault 82. The Miner family made decent time avoiding the detonation which Galen had always believed was a near-direct hit on Providence. This liminal assertion never changed, anytime this dream transpired._

_The gear-shaped door in the rock face rolled back in place with mere minutes to spare. The tectonic activity caused by the nuclear detonation knocked out power in the shelter. It was rapidly understood by the families that had sought refuge there that the amenities of the vault had been a projection, and that the electrical failure had disrupted the illusion. There was nothing. Overseer Bensington tried the vault door, but she found it immovable and decreed it such. Trapped in a wet, lightless cave while the world above was wrought asunder by a nuclear apocalypse, they had no food or safe water. They only had each other._

_Galen lay on the cold stone floor of the cave, limp and ineffectual. The moisture from the cave clung to him, puddled beneath him. Yet, he didn't move from where he lay, didn't bother seeking a dry place or dry clothes. He simply stared off into the darkness and let the muck pool around him. He could hear in some far part of the cave, several other 82ers having a heated argument. The forming mire cradled him._

Hot foam frothed from his mouth, and he sat up rasping.

"This is proof you can't just go around giving people sulfuric acid injections!" Carrington was in a near-roar. "How many times have I told you to stop pitching your serum to the new agents!"

"He was that bad off!" Tom objected. "You! You SAW that mess of sludge that started pouring out of him! I don't have to run tests on that stuff to know whatever poisoned him was bad news! The Institute HAD him!"

Sludge. Every inch of Geek felt clammy. He looked down to find himself heavily layered in sinewy scars, the floor pooled up with a dark sulfurous substance he was positive had been sweated out of him or worse.

"Tom didn't do anything wrong," Hancock defended, sardonically. "You... you didn't see everything I've-- we've seen him eat. It wasn't his serum that did him in. He was already dying before he even stepped foot in the a Commonwealth. We just quickened the process. Least he ain't suffering now."

"I mean, you pretty much handed him the trigger," Deacon muttered pointedly.

"Deacon! Out of line," Desdemona growled.

"And you were the gun itself," Hancock snapped. "You were planning on keeping the prototype for yourself when Geek flipped out, even though you promised him that the recon would win him favor with the Railroad. What, ripping Synths apart with his teeth was too uncouth for your little club? You're all goddamn ingrates, just letting him die like that."

"He...  _ate_  them?" Geek could tell that was Glory's voice. "I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm speaking ill of the dead, but that sounds like a sick load of karma. I... I've got a dead drop to catch."

"Can I at least take his body somewhere to give him a proper burial? He deserves better than what he's been handed him here."

By the time Geek had stood, Glory had left. The group encircled a large round drafting table in the center of the space. He approached barefoot, feeling lighter, more steady, sharper, and noted this.

"I, for one, don't think I deserved a miracle."

They looked up to find a mangled but cognizant Geek. Relief washed over Desdemona, Deacon and Hancock, while Carrington and Tom seemed nearly revolted.

"There, there wasn't much left of you the nanites didn't chew up, was there?" Tom uttered, backing up a step, uncertain whether Geek would be furious.

"I've never in my life--" Carrington cut off abruptly, attempting to regain medical tact. "How do you feel?"

Geek looked to his bare hands, then to Hancock, whom he could tell was hiding his alarm well, and shot him a smile.

"I... I actually think for the first time in years... that I'm gonna be ok."

"I suppose if you can call becoming a candy pink zombie a happy ending," Deacon snarked deadpan.

The description left Geek feeling his face in the absence of a nearby mirror of any kind. Jutting textures, and it finally sank in that his right eye was now missing.

"I guess the past 228 years finally caught up with me," he laughed. "Maybe Daisy was right after all."

"She's... often right about things," Hancock affirmed, unsure what he could be on about.

"I told her I was prewar. She pretty much told me I was either full of shit, or I was the most well-preserved ghoul she'd ever met. I knew she got the preservative part right, but." Another laugh, more genuine this time. He could hear how his trachea had warped like a straw in a too-hot beverage. "I feel fantastic. Tom, I rightly think y'saved my life. An' if it wasn't for the lot of ya, I wouldn't have even ended up here."

"The Railroad's lifesaver," Tom remarked, admiring getting respected for his innovation for once, albeit from an unexpected source. "Anytime, pink ghoul guy."

"Don't speak so soon," Carrington began, tugging at his collar like his necktie was on too tight. "You should take it easy until any side effects can be accounted for."

"The only taking it easy I wanna be doing is gettin' a bath in the river and slippin' back in my clothes, so I can get right back to work."

"We simply can't do that," Desdemona insisted. "You're a potential liability until we can determine you're of sound constitution. And the way you handled the Switchboard. Deacon tells me that was an isolated incident--I pray that's true. I respect your willingness to aid our cause, but you need to untether. You've clearly been through at least one near-death experience. You need to take care of yourself before we can safely rely on you."

Geek stiffened.

"You can rely on me to follow orders. It's the least I can do for what your people have done for me." Hancock had come over to stand on his side of the round table. "How long before you'll evaluate my entry?"

"Give it a week," Carrington weighed in, seeming most exhausted of any of them by the course of events. "I'll give you a full physical now, and again after a week, to compare your recovery. Think of it as a fitness evaluation. It was my prototype you retrieved, so your fate as an agent is in my hands. In the mean time, I demanded the full story before all of this, and I refuse to see to Tom and Deacon's mess without even knowing what is going on."


	21. Chapter 21

“Such extensive damage.”

Carrington muttered to himself indiscernibly as he looked Geek over with various ginger palpations and medical devices. As the doctor scrutinized him, Geek sat obediently on the edge of one of the stone coffins, which had been simply left rather than move it when the Railroad had relocated its base of operations to this crypt. The stethoscope was ice-cold when it went to his chest and back to listen, but Geek didn’t really mind. The doctor clicked his tongue several times in disdain for the costliness of the treatment Geek had accepted so readily from Tinker Tom. The sample of excretion the doctor took from Geek’s scarred skin singed the swab, and he murmured in displeasure before trying again carefully with the side of an aluminum-barrel fountain pen. Geek watched while he did something with it, but couldn’t make out what he was doing.

“I’m surprised you’re even standing. This looks superficially similar to ghoulification, but I can’t reasonably assess the condition of your internal organs to verify that. What I  _can_ safely say is that you have definitely mutated. That dark mess you made seems to be a metal excretion achieved through a thiolated salt solution. Simply put, the diluted sulfuric acid from Tom’s serum infused in your bloodstream and a chemical reaction took place which leached all kinds of metal from your body via your sweat glands. Lead, iron, aluminum, even traces of uranium. That sludge in the floor will become a rich metal slag once the sweat evaporates. Did you all mean it literally when you said you’d  _eaten_  a Synth? Absolute revulsion aside, if you meant a Gen I or Gen II, that didn’t even have living tissues in it. No part of the earlier models isn’t toxic to a human being.”

Geek had watched Carrington gesticulate in near-exasperation without comment, taking in all he had to say.

“Mutated huh? Mutated...  _further_.” He let out a heavy sigh, and picked at his now vacant right eye socket. “You wanted the whole story? I haven’t pieced everything together yet, but I’ll tell you what I have of it. I’m from Vault 82. South-Central Mass. I haven’t figured out what exactly the experiment was, but I know we was guinea pigs, an’ I know it had to do with feedin’ us  _goo_  for every meal. I just can’t tell ya whether the food dispensers screwin’ up was all according t’plan. I’ve got real cynical about all this shit over the years... I know for a fact I’m not the only one of us that started supplementin’ his diet with whatever appealed to him. The doc in Worcester called it pica, eatin’ all the things I personally can rattle off’s been on the menu, past hundred years or so. The food paste stopped bein’ enough on its own, when it was supposed to be a master-food with all the vitamins and junk anybody needed. Maybe it wasn’t the machines. Maybe it spoiled. Who knows how long the experiment was supposed to go on.”

“Why do you say your nutritional dependency was a mutation?”

“I’ve eaten a thousand different things, ate ‘em solid. An’ they never came out... undigested. I’ve been  _digestin_ ’ everything I’ve eaten. Makes sense how I sweated? ...the metal. But it makes me wonder if that’s what use my sweat will serve me now, or if I gotta keep gettin’ more a Tom’s shots to detox.” Geek looked up knowingly and pointed at Carrington to catch him before garnering commentary, recognizing a gap in his story. “But y’know what I ain’t been digestin’? Actual fuckin’ food.”

“You... might try some normal food now.” Deacon had come up to them after changing back into his casual white dress shirt and slacks. “Ease into it.”

“You’ve mentioned preservatives before bein’ a factor in all this,” Hancock started, having been sitting in the doctor’s chair with his arms crossed the whole time. “Mister Intel might have a point. Maybe prewar food ain’t totally off-limits to ya. Fancy Lads are about as much of a nonfood as it gets. An’ you were eating on that tub of shortening. Usually easing into eating food again after being critically ill means lots of soup, but for you it might mean just bridging back to what you’re  _supposed_  to be eating.”

“You’re not entirely wrong to speculate such,” Carrington nodded, brow wrinkled as he looked over to Hancock briefly. He’d forgotten he was there, he’d been so quiet. “People who are born into a settlement with higher caliber food sources, like Diamond City with its multiple quality restaurants, tend to do very poorly adapting to wasteland fare. But wastelanders who’ve been long accustomed to RadBug for protein, tato for their starch staple, and shelf-stable prewar food--they tend to be able to eat anything. I’ve read in medical journals, as well, that cultures with lean diets adjust abominably to high-fat cuisine, and vice versa. You might have been unable to stomach unpreserved foods because you were shocking your system. Which... brings me to the other half of my prognosis.”

“I... just might try it. There’s no tellin’ whether Tom’s shot might’ve complicated the range of what I can stomach.”

“And that’s exactly what I was getting at. I likely couldn’t pry the exact ingredients of the injection from Tom, but I know there’s bacteria cultures in it. Part of what makes the human digestive tract so successful is a symbiosis with key bacteria. Honestly, before you mentioned confidently that you were digesting the things you’ve swallowed, I thought perhaps the issue was that the toxins of what you were ingesting had killed yours off, but now I only feel more confident in theorizing that if you  _were_  mutated, so were the bacterial cultures that live in your stomach and intestines. You  _have_  adapted to eat the way you’ve been eating, that’s for certain. But whether the bacteria in Tom’s injection will end up competing with those inside you, only time and tests will tell. Antibiotics can be complicated to predict.”

“Does this mean bloodwork?” Geek flinched. He didn’t want to know whether his blood was still neon pink after all this.

“Yes, but to be perfectly fair with you, it’s going to be slow-going. I’ve only got the time at the moment to have this discussion because your dramatic arrival with my prototype has frozen progress in HQ.” Carrington tourniqueted Geek’s upper arm with a length of rubber, and easily found a vein. Steeled for the stick, the pink ghoul readily let the doctor draw four vials. As predicted, the blood nearly looked like hot pink  _milk_. They both reacted poorly to the sight. “Once business resumes as normal, I will only have so much time to scrutinize your exact condition to give you a definitive diagnosis. I’m still not positive you’re not terminal, but this once-over gives me the reassurance to turn you loose to take stock for yourself of how your body reacts to its mutations.”

“...So you’re still tellin’ me I’m on forced leave.”

“You’re not even hired yet!” Carrington massaged his temples with one hand and grunted, then pulled composure into his shoulders, and snapped the rubber off Geek’s arm. The doctor then capped the blood samples to deposit them temporarily into a medical tray nearby. “But yes, I’m not even considering taking you on until you see whether you can function a week from now. I can tell your body’s still eliminating toxins. You’re going to continue sweating, and this sweat is caustic. There’s a good chance you’re going to accumulate further damage.”

“Can’t get _much_ worse,” Geek rasped jokingly, messing with the hair he had left. “Sweat don’t really burn me much, but I seen what it did to that cotton ball. I’ll be careful.”

Carrington handed him his jumpsuit and armor, having gotten to the end of his patience with his impromptu patient. Exhaustion dripped from his dismissal.

“Have a care, will you?”

“Do my best.” Geek didn’t put his coveralls back on just yet, dumping them into Hancock’s objecting lap. He purposely kept hold of one of his shoulder pieces. “Before we leave, though, I gotta talk to Tom.”

Approaching the eccentric from across the room, Geek interrupted Tom scrutinizing something on the terminal on the desk at which he sat. The man mumbled to himself, eyes dull with information.

“Tinker Tom?” he started. Tom jerked up from his train of thought and came to.

“Hm? Oh, it’s you! You really mean it, that you feel better? That’s definitely the first time that’s ever happened with my serum.”

“Yeah,” Geek smiled. “I think so. Sorry to interrupt. I’m about to head out, but I had to do two things first. One, I had to thank you. Your treatment was unorthodox, but I think it was exactly what I needed. And two, Carrington mentioned you’re the quartermaster?”

“No need to thank me,” Tom beamed, slouching back in his desk chair. “And that’s correct. You hittin’ me up for goods? I don’t know what all I can rightly part with, since you’re not a bonafide agent yet, but I’m sure I have something juicy.”

“I ain’t lookin’ for handouts, especially not after how much y’helped me out with my health. I need somethin’ to keep myself occupied while I take this week to recoup. How much leather can y’spare? I’d like to upgrade my armor.”

“Man, me an’ my boys have got better than leather! You should come and see me when you pass the test. I will fix you up.” He sprung up and began digging through the metal shelving that lined the walls of his sprawling corner of the crypt. “What kinda customizing you thinking about in the mean time? Dense plate-layered? Deep-pocketed? Maybe somethin’ pneumatic? I got all kinds of toys. Great stuff to act as a stabilizer layer. A jar a wingnuts, makes great studded armor...”

“I already got all kinds a pockets.” He surreptitiously pulled out several hundred dollar bills where Tom could see the denominations himself, for emphasis. Tom blinked. “You gotta point, though. Mods seem more useful’n addin’ more layers. Got any mods that’d keep my arms an’ legs from... gettin’ broke so easy?”

“--I’ve got just the thing.” He produced a long wooden box after rooting around a bit, dropping it excitedly on the desk. “How does the guts from power armor legs sound? The components are compact enough to incorporate into greaves. This pair just hasn’t gotten used for it yet.”

“It sounds like you’re just about as crazy as I am.” Geek grinned stupidly, eyeing the box and tucking the bills in the bib pocket of Tom’s overalls. “Mmh. Can I part you with two or three tool aprons, too?”

“Oh man, that’s the kinda leather y’wanted? You really are a pocket fiend.”

The two went back and forth spitballing concepts for a while, but Hancock came up to interrupt, arms full of Geek’s things.

“How long am I supposed to sit over here with your purse while you chat up this mad scientist in your underwear?”

Geek took them from him apologetically.

“We can continue this in a week,” Tom insisted, understanding Hancock wanted to leave. He shooed off the two of them pleasantly. “I’ll be schemin’ up something special for ya. Have fun on vacay, my friend.”

“I like somebody that’d spoil you.” Hancock chuffed and patted Geek on the back as they let themselves out the back way. Down the stairs, and through the waterlogged, unpaved patch. “I gotta find a way to spoil ya worse, though.”

“And just what exactly do you call what you n’ me did at the quarry?”

Hancock barked and grinned at him.

“The beginnings of a fine friendship.”


	22. Chapter 22

“So have you given any thought to breakfast?” Hancock threw Geek his boxers from where he reclined on the concrete shore. Geek caught them and grinned at him while he walked up from where he’d been bathing the sludge off himself, letting Hancock get a glimpse of him wet and naked before slipping into his underwear. “Hey now, what’s the rush?”

“Hush, you.”

The pink ghoul chuckled and approached him to retrieve his tank top. Once in his first layer, he sat near Hancock’s feet and began slipping back into his leather armor piece by piece. He began with the thighs and crotch plate, then the chestplate, then the pauldrons. As he worked, adjusting position and affixing he buckled straps, he noted in the early morning light how despite all the deep wiry scarring, the pink complexion rang out just as starkly as it always had. Somehow, he’d always assumed ghoulification altered one’s skin tone--but then again, his was through centuries of staining. He caught Hancock watching with an ampuole of Jet in hand, and made eye contact while he put his gloves on before doing anything else.

“I hadn’t, to be honest. Given it thought.” Geek resumed the ritual of getting re-dressed, shimmying into the moderately stained, faded green jumpsuit, and he felt much better once he righted the hood over his sinewy scalp. He put his boots on next, tucking the legs of the coveralls into them as he zipped them up. As he reaffixed his Pipboy, he remarked offhand, “Good t’know I’m still an eyeful.”

“More than an eyeful.” Hancock half-sputtered pruriently, heavy-lidded at him. “Things about that view might’a changed as of recent, but it’s not a bad change. If my opinion matters any.”

Geek unzipped his jumpsuit to stuff in the tool aprons, then zipped up so he wouldn’t have to carry them individually. Then, he picked up the box Tom had given him, and rose to his feet.

“Course it does. An’ I’m sure I’ll find somethin’ on the way back home.”

“Home?” Hancock echoed, following Geek as the pink one walked off South down the first street he could find.

“Home.”

As they walked without conversation down an empty street, thoughts consumed Geek of how his appetites had shifted over time. It wasn’t long before he got too restless not to verbalize himself.

“Is it a good time to tell you somethin’?”

“Shoot.”

“Most folks in Vault 82 didn’t take to the paste so easy as I did. There was a huge fuss in the beginning. But how I saw it--I agreed with our doctors, Bell and Lyst--havin’ just the one source of food made choosin’ what you was gonna eat real simple. One choice, no waste. Stuff’s shelf-stable, and don’t go stale exposed to air. Even if ya took your meal back to y’quarters to eat whenever y’finally could force it down, it was still good. Not that it had any flavor or consistency to alter, if it  _could_  go bad.”

He rounded a red Corvega that hadn’t entirely rusted out, and ran his gloved fingers along the paint with a distant mind.

“Took me a long ass time before I caught on. I wasn’t the only one who’d been tryin’ in secret to supplement everything the paste lacked. Without other food sources, we... made do. Case in point, none a our Pipboys still got their paint, case you noticed and ever wondered.” He held up his left arm for emphasis. “I didn’t put two and two together ‘til the schoolhouse ran outta chalk. Nobody ever explicitly discusses the pica shit around the others. It’s a private thing. Not everybody accepted it as easy as I did.”

“Why  _did_  you take so easily to it?” Hancock was doing his best to remain attentive and understanding, having gotten up on the trunk of the large-finned car when he recognized Geek would be lingering on the vehicle for a bit.

“I can’t fault the company that made the paste for everything that happened. I just don’t have it in me. Lotta 82ers have got all the spit and vitriol in the world for Vault-Tec, for installing the dispensers in the first place... but I can’t convince myself that they had any idea the paste was capable of that level of physical and psychological damage. I’m one of the well-adjusted ones, if that gives y’a frame a reference.”

“I’d like to think Vault-Tec was just a company invested foremost in providing shelter to whoever they could fit in there, but I’m thinkin’ less n’less that’s the case.” Hancock dragged his hunting knife along the weathered finish of the Corvega beside his leg. "Accountability is a massive burden. Makes me wonder whether they fucked up anywhere else.”

Rather than respond to him, Geek popped the hood and started feeling around for various components. He sampled readily, using pliers and crescent wrench alike to dismantle pieces as he pleased, swallowing whole whatever fit in his mouth. From behind the engine he produced the fusion core, which at one end had been leaking. He licked the corrosion with a pleased sneer, and proceeded to be reckless, cracking the damaged end open with the wrench to pry out the tritium rod to swallow the slender cylinder whole.

“Ha. Took apart a thousand fusion cores before the war. Family had a scrap yard. Good t’know I’m not rusty enough I didn’t just blow us up.”

“Did you just-- Are you tellin’ me you just ate the engine, Geek?”

“Spicy.” He slapped the grill and wrung his hands. “Wonder how much coolant’s left in this baby.”

“You just had a bath and you’re already crawling under cars.”

Geek shuttled himself along the ground to poke his head out behind the car. “Gotta keep up my strength, right?” Then the pink ghoul vanished back under, and grappled at the under-guts of the vehicle, feeling for specific lines. He knocked at the thing in key places with his wrench. When he found a dull clunk among hollow clanging, he jumped to unscrewing the line with parted lips at the ready. He found the oil pan first, the dark aged stuff more viscous than molasses, and he wrapped his thirsty lips around it to apply suction. Once he got fluid momentum to the bitter but satisfying goo, he tangled his fingers up in the transmission and pressed himself against the chassis. He caught himself grinding against it navel to groin, and choked on the oil, the end of the stuff spluttering on his face.

“Y’ok?” Hancock’s motorcycle boots hit the pavement and approach Geek. When Hancock bent down to squint under the Corvega, Geek flustered and did his best to ignore anything had happened, oil dripping across his face with gravity, and into his empty eye socket. “You... got a lil’ somethin’.” Hancock made a general gesture toward his own face, insinuating it wasn’t just in one spot.

“I, I know. It-- started comin’ out too fast.” Geek shoved himself up out from under the car and pulled out a work rag to wipe down his face. Steadying his breath was easier said than done.

“Somethin’ tells me your appetite derailed whatever it was you were tryin’ t’tell me before.”

Geek coughed a bit, the minerals in the oil clinging to the back of his throat, then he slumped back against the tire well and rim.

“Y’ain’t wrong. All the original staff at 82 is dead now. Elba replaced Overseer Bensington as our leader. I don’t like callin’ him Overseer, but he’s got people skills most of us lost if we ever had it in the first place. His first act in power was a speech, formally addressing the pica epidemic. It was a massive elephant in the room we simply wouldn’t talk about with anyone else, and when he brought it up, it was like a light turned on in everybody’s heads. Guess as our barber, he had a demeanor people opened up to easier. Suddenly we wasn’t alone anymore, if we didn’t wanna be. Most of us  _still_  rather takes it alone.

“Well,” Geek continued, putting up his wrench in his side pocket. “What he decided we needed to do about it, was get outside food sources. That didn’t go over well. We all leapt on the ‘real’ food the instant the runners would come back into the vault, but nobody could keep half of it down anymore after decades of nothing but paste. Elba didn’t like it, but we all had little...  _requests_ from then on for the runners t’come back with. Chalk, cigarettes, mud from the gorge, nails, soap. I couldn’t even begin t’list it all off. As I said, they’re private about it. Most of ‘em tend to make their craving requests to Ceruss, Emery, and Jasper personally. Every once in a while, Opal tries to get people to sign onto her public laundry list, to start up a food pool everybody can agree on. But even after all this time, nobody can come to terms with this shit.”

“Do we need to keep food staples on hand for ya?” Hancock smiled, offering him a hand up, which he took. “I’m sure Whitechapel Charlie wouldn’t mind keepin’ quarts of oil. If y’meant it that you consider Goodneighbor home now, that is.”

“I do. I really do. Fuckers back home hate me. Y’all think I’m weird, but I AM weird.” Geek grinned stupidly at his friend. “The money I paid Tom for all the bounty I’ve been luggin’, it’s not all of it. Never said I was good with money--how’s about I blow it all gettin’ everybody in the Third Rail drunk as fuck?”

“Never too early to start drinkin’. Comon, I think we both need a couple bottles of bourbon.”


	23. Chapter 23

“Name y’poison.” Geek slurred and poked at one of the Neighborhood Watch ghouls. “S, ss’on me.”

“I think you should go sit yourself down,” the cockney-programmed Mr. Handy interrupted, nonchalantly cleaning out a glass with a dish rag and its pincers as it balanced a bowler on its domed top. “...After buyin’ this fine gentle-ghoul a beah.”

“Ssh, sure thing, Charlie. Anything for you, you sh-- shiny bastard.” The pink ghoul slapped fifteen dollars on the counter in front of the guardsman in a three-piece suit. “Y’want a Gwinnett? He’s got all the Gwinnett you can chug.”

The ghoul thanked him, unsure as to the correct response.

The Third Rail wasn’t especially large, having once been the loading platform to the Blue Line. Down the stairs and to the left, one found the stage act, and to the right, the VIP lounge which had once been the station general store. The bar itself was straight ahead through a smattering of mismatched kitchen tables with a variety of chairs. A thick arch of smoke, from tobacco and Jet alike, veiled the ceiling, and lent a unique vaporous aroma to the thriving hub.

Geek sat himself on a pool chair in the corner with a bottle of whiskey, next to Hancock. Hancock had resumed the mayoral frock and tricorn Geek had come to know him for. The two melted into the furniture and soaked up the jazz noir the Rail’s own red flower, the sequin-gowned Magnolia, filled the place with.

“You do know this is my bar, right,” Hancock murmured into Geek’s shoulder. “You just dumped all your hard earned cash into Goodneighbor’s coffers. Keeping this place running funds upkeep on the city. Such generosity, such beneficence. Today, you’re the Patron Saint of Goodneighbor.”

“Are you tryin’ t’tell me gettin’ drunk here has a  _purpose_?”

“Hey now.” Hancock shoved him playfully. “Don’t it always?” He took a swig off his bourbon. “You... you holding up all right? Breakfast of champions, am I right?”

“My only complaint is that I find myself even harder t’get drunk. Guessin’ it has somethin’ t’do with scar tissue and all that ss, stuff.”

“If this is a ghoul thing, it’s only partly that. Heh. Why do you think I do everything to excess? Every ghoul I’ve ever met has had something about em’s louder than any human. Demeanor, interest, appetite. Aspirations. Even good ol’ Kent over at the Memory Den, my man’s thing is potent and grandiose memories. The nerve just don’t work the same after the radiation damage. It takes a lot to... properly stimulate a ghoul.”

“Are you proposin’ the kinda experimentation I think you are?”

“I wouldn’t be against it, whenever you felt up to it, that’s for damn sure.”

“I’ll drink t’that.” He did.

“I’ll drink to you drinkin’ to that.” He did.

“And I’ll drink t’you drinkin’ t’my drink.” He did. “Keep this up an’ I just might actually get drunk tonight.”

“...All jokes aside, I’ve been meanin’ t’ask ya. Been eatin’ at me since we headed back this way.” Geek looked to Hancock expectantly. “Did you... know that shot would do this to ya?”

“--Fuck no. This is probably just about the last thing I could’a expected. But I figure anything could’a been better’n how I was goin’. ...Ss, sorry if that sounds ss, ssh, selfish.”

“I’m sure you woke up to the lot of us yelling at each other. We thought you were dead. I... I was struggling with the idea you’d died so quick after meeting you. To be perfectly honest, traveling with you has been one of the smartest decisions I think I’ve ever made. I haven’t always been the smartest, or the bravest. I’ve made mistakes. Heck, I continue makin’ ‘em.”

“Hey now. I don’t fault ya f’what happened cause of the sS Psycho. You mean it, though? You actually like bein’ around me?”

“I continue to see myself in you more and more with every passing day, and to see you thrive with things I feel we have in common brightens and warms me as much as a good glass of bourbon. You’re like sunshine.” Hancock smiled privately after another sip. “What kept me together in the fuss was hoping, ah. This ain’t an easy thing to admit, even with the liquor. Even going into it, it sounds selfish. Since the night at the gravel pit, I couldn’t stop thinking about you turning ghoul somehow, so we could do this long-term. I can’t help but feel like I willed this on ya.”

“There’s a lotta power to a man’s dreams.” And nightmares. Further comment was drowned out by more whiskey.

“...I told you about my run-in with Vic, but I never really explained me going out into the ruins on my personal Renaissance. You know I’m not stranger to the chem life. I came across a hit of an experimental radioactive drug, last hit of its kind. I knew what it’d do to me. I did it anyway. I figure if I couldn’t see the bastard in the mirror anymore that I was before the drug... All the terrible things I  _let_  happen that I felt I had no agency to intervene in... Maybe it’d end it for me. Best hit of my life, I gotta tell you. But... every ending is a new beginning. If anything, you of all things have proven that to me. Reflecting back on my life, I’m ready to stop running from myself, thanks to you bein’ in it.”

Geek stared into the mouth of his now-empty whiskey.

“Guessin’ this might a made me more attractive to ya. ...Heh...” The pink ghoul looked up at the beautiful singer at the mic on stage across the room. “Could’a ended up with any girl in the Commonwealth, an’ ya got stuck with me.”

“I could say the same to you.” Hancock reached over like he was trying to grab the whiskey bottle, but grabbed something else instead, eliciting a wheeze. “I don’t think the injection did all too much to  _that_.”

“That’s... some Halloween costume, Blue.”

Geek and Hancock straightened up to find a familiar dark-haired woman in a newboy cap and red coat standing before them, her face not quite visibly frozen in alarm. Geek glanced dismissively to his Pipboy to check the date. He regained eye contact while he picked at his empty socket not unlike one might pick his nose, detachedly fishing a finger around in it.

“It’s not too real, is it?” He rubbed the oil he’d found, around between his fingers, eye shut in thought. “...Tch, funny. Hadn’t heard anybody mention Halloween in ages.”

“Eugh. I just... I had to find you again. I had to know if you were okay. And when I heard a rumor a pink wastelander had taken up in Goodneighbor, I had to investigate. Turned out to be true.”

“More like y’had t’know if I’d figured out more of the bullshit going on in my vault. Like how the paste turned out t’be just plastic? That’s a real hilarious one. A dogged reporter told me that one. Y’might a heard about that, though.” He lit a cigarette and let out the first breath through his gashed nostrils. “Y’lied t’me ‘bout that doctor bein’ a bad lead.”

“If you don’t mind, Miss Wright, we were in the middle of a private conversation.”

“Pardon  _me_ , Mayor. Unlike you helping him drown himself into alcoholic oblivion, I want to figure out what’s wrong with his vault, so I can help him fix it and get his folks better!”

Hancock straightened forward, intensity in his rigid features.

“You don’t know a goddamn thing about what’s going on between him n’ me.”

Incredulous, she gesticulated aggressively with her hands a moment, then pointed accusingly at the mayor with a sharpened brow and a snarl.

“I know he probably wouldn’t be your pink lookalike if it wasn’t for you!”

Glass erupted with a bang. Geek had thrown down the whiskey bottle between his feet.

“Are y’tryin’ t’start a bar fight? Because it sounds like y’steerin’ for a bar fight.”

Piper softened, nearly sorrowful at being shut down like this.

“Have you completely given up on saving your people, Blue? Just feel like detaching from reality instead of addressing the real life threatening issues you’ve got going there? I traveled all the way up here,  _on a hunch_ , just to check in on you, and I find you a wad of pink ghoul jerky chewed up by my  _SECOND_  least favorite mayor in the Commonwealth.” Her tone spluttered into bitterness. “When’s your flavor gonna run out, Blue? When’s he gonna spit you out... or swallow you?”

Geek just stared at her a good bit. Needing another hit off his cigarette was the only thing that unstuck him. He looked down at his glass mess and nudged it with his feet.

“What do you really want.”

“I want answers. And I thought you did, too.” She shook her head slowly at him.

“I found my answers. You should find the door. This is a celebration, not a pity party. Do I look miserable t’you?”

She slapped her legs and threw her hands up.

“Fine. If you’re going to just... give up. I’ll go. I’ll go myself.”

If Hancock hadn’t formed a reflexive iron grip on Geek’s thigh, the pink dreg would have shot right up into her face. The mayor nonchalantly finished off his bourbon, and calmly set down the bottle on the coffee table in front of them.

“ _YOU CAN’T GO THERE_!” Geek slouched back into the couch, withdrawing into his own ferocity. “ _You can’t_. Y’won’t find answers in 82. Just more problems.”

“You’re a mess. Coming here was the worst thing you could have done. All I can hope is that it helped, me telling ya where the Vault-Tec building was. If you even got that far...” The reporter helped herself to a Nuka Cola off the coffee table, and tipped her hat brim at the two ghouls. “Forget you.”

Once Piper had ascended the subway stairs and exited, Hancock let go.

“The fuck was that?” he asked Geek.

“She... We met in Diamond City. She wanted an interview. Fascinated by me. After, she was convinced she  _had_  t’take me to the HQ building herself, personally. Things didn’t get that far, clearly. My compulsions, and security, got to me first.” Geek pulled the cork off a bottle of vodka with his teeth and swallowed it, and started in on the liquor. “More I see of that girl, more I’m convinced she’s just a morbid-curious driver slowing past a seven-car pile-up on the interchange. Keeps takin’ the exit just t’loop back around for a second look, too.”

“She means well. She’s just too pointed when her heart’s in it. She’s been like that since she was a kid.”

“You know her? Like, actually know her?”

“I’m from Diamond City. Course I know her.” He leaned into Geek, and draped an arm across his shoulder. “She’s gotta point, y’know. A real misguided one without all the details, but. You think you can safely say that serum evened you out and you feel healthy again? I know you well enough by know to suspect you’ve been trying to fabricate a plan to take Tinker Tom out to the Deep South of the Commonwealth.”

“They’re probably better off dead.” He let it linger too long without elaboration. “Poisoning an’ starvation are a hell of a way to go, but being alive two hundred years, when you’re too scared to come up top so you just lock yourself in y’bedroom unless it’s mess hall hour? With the same twenty-three books to read over and over. The gym equipment is worn to annihilation. Y’try t’create t’pass the time... but then when you’re done with your grand opus two years later, whadda y'do with the next ten? And now... now I’m sure this serum made me a ghoul? Am I gonna live another two hundred years? What do I do with that?”

“You’re up top now, for one thing. And... and you’re with me, long as you want me to be. There’s a whole wide wasteland to sightsee. And a whole lotta wickedness that needs its head bashed in. If they don’t know they’ve got this choice, they don’t know they  _have_ a choice. You felt trapped there. Went crazy inside your head a bit, ‘cause you’re intelligent. But you came all the way out here to Scollay Square to find answers, and I feel like you’re onto finding a solution, too. We really should figure out a way to at least pitch Tom’s serum to them, and make it your folks’ choice.”

Geek chugged the rest of the vodka in one go, set the bottle down, and stood.

“I’m not the only one who went crazy inside his head in Vault 82.”

Then he walked off to clear his head.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violence TW. Geek blows off some steam.

With a resigned dispassion, Geek approached the bar as Magnolia resumed singing. Hancock watched from the corner in tacit consternation, and melted himself into the pool chair in a fresh ampuole of Jet.

“Another vodka, Charlie.”

The pink ghoul flopped enough dollar bills on the counter, and the hovering bartender Handy obliged. It eyed him, polishing a glass clean between a pneumatic pair of pincers.

"You look like you could use a better distraction than chasin' after some temporary blindness. Lookin' t'blow off some steam?"

Rather than crack into his purchase immediately, Geek glanced up at Whitechapel Charlie.

"You've got my attention."

"Thought it might be to your interests. Now, we've got a bit of a problem with vermin as of recent." Even within the viscous Cockney accent, the heady way the holographic voice rolled the word  _vermin_  set Geek's scalp prickling. "I've heard you're quite good at exterminating pests."

Geek lit up a fresh cigarette.

"You heard right." He fully exhaled the first long drag. "What kinds of pests we talkin'?"

"They're gnawing up the floorboards of a few of the warehouses around town, if you get my meaning. Scaring off paying customers." Charlie set down one glass to start on another. "Bad for business. Bad for the community. And worse, if we let the problem breed to the level of a full-on infestation."

"And am I to suspect I know who's footin' the bill on this job?"

He not-so-subtly glanced over his shoulder to check on the whereabouts of his disaffected boyfriend, who still remained lounging in the corner. He knew that, sometime during the afternoon, Hancock must have prompted Charlie to comb for a suitable mercenary-type to handle the task, or at least find a window to pitch the idea to Geek specifically. It certainly had to have been somehow communicated before now, the veneer of Jet all too familiar upon the colonial ghoul's slack face.

"I might work for this bar, but I think you know who owns the bar." Charlie tossed the dishrag down. "Doesn't really much matter who's askin' ya t'clean up some of the rough edges of Goodneighbor, does it? Job's three hundred caps. Hundred a nest. Now, I've got more important things to do than keep on jibber-jabberin' about this. We have a deal?"

"Yeah. We gotta deal." He didn't want to admit that the caps were unimportant, in as far as what he stood to gain from the arrangement, but he still found humor in knowing Hancock's money would be funneling right back into Goodneighbor just like the money from Mass Gravel & Sand had. A beneficiary matching the face value of follow-through.

Charlie produced a small scrap of paper, and slid it across the counter.

"Don't worry about checking in with me until you're done. I've got eyes and ears."

Geek scrutinized the card. Sure enough, these buildings were all within the confined of what he'd come to understand as the settlement's perimeter. He pocketed it, then nodded, and took his vodka and his leave.

With a cigarette pursed taut in his desiccated lips, he glanced down each end of the narrow alleyway he knelt in. He was mere yards from the corner of the town square. Charlie's notes warned to fly under the radar, as the Neighborhood Watch had likely been paid off to help guard the Triggermen's hideouts. Screwdriver in one hand, open bobbypin in the other, he leaned stealthily into the shadowed inset porch of the door to the first warehouse he'd been told needed... vacating. Picking locks with a hairpin rather than a set of tools for it ended up being rather simple, contrary to his expectations. Prior experience with more sophisticated implements had trained his touch and hearing to know how to wield just about any sufficient shape with the technique such a skill required. As he heard the last tumbler flick over into place, he wondered whether he hoped more to catch them off guard, or to have a full ten-against-one with them. He thought again to the Switchboard.

No, these wouldn't be Synths. He could manage this.

Geek let himself inside to find the five-story brick structure similar on the inside to a townhouse, tall but narrow, with a staircase off to the corner. He assumed there would be a single dim workspace room as this to each floor. Most equipment and shelving had been taken away, so he couldn't guess what kind of warehouse this may have once been, beyond the remnants of the greasy, sterile stink of metalworking machinery. A back room to the far end suggested to him there were either offices or storage on each story, though. The vodka went empty in two solid gulps, and he quietly set the bottle down beside the front door as he crept upstairs. The knuckledusters slipped from his pockets onto his hands as he started upward.

The lightness of his own steps surprised him, so accustomed to decades of metallic toxins accumulated inside him rendering inescapably heavy-footed. Where he had instead expected the wooden stairs to have belied him, instead it was his unnecessary caution. In trying to keep himself from coming down too heavily on the boards of the stairs, he grew too focused on each step, and before he knew it, a ghoul caught on to their trespasser. She rushed him with a rough growl, and slammed a cedar baseball bat into his left shoulder.

"Fellas, we've been had!"

Staggering, he pink ghoul seethed, grateful he hadn't seen much cause to remove his leather armor when he returned to town. He barely dodged a second swing before he got on level with the brawny ghoul in suspenders. Geek connected a meat mallet punch into the Triggerman's jaw, and she wheezed in a flinch before trying for a third swing right at his head. Panting, she whirled a near one-eighty from the follow-through. He wrung his left arm around her neck from behind and slammed the bladed knuckles into her nape with his right. Once he dropped her, he continued up to the third floor.

The burn of the vodka really kicked in by the time her compatriots rushed him. One of the next two Triggermen had a submachine gun. The fortysome fellow in a tuxedo effortlessly unloaded a good fifty bullets at him before the pink ghoul could escape the spray. Geek disarmed him with a wringing motion of the trigger hand, and continued to grapple with him. Headbutting the guy in the forehead to daze him long enough to wrench the weapon from him. Up close, he had no trouble putting the muzzle to the underside of the guy's jaw and pumping a few rounds into his skull from underneath. As he let go of the second kill, it was like a mosquito bite. A bullet to the leg, from a pistol.

The liquor numbed Geek to feeling injury, and he lunged to slam the butt of the submachine gun into the ear of the third guy. A patched up suit, a bowler, early twenties. The Triggerman dropped his pistol to clutch the side of his head, but the two still scrambled for the weapon. Geek got to it first. They wrestled in the floor before the pink ghoul pinned the guy down, and he swallowed the small gun and paused a moment to savor it. Then he punched the guy's face in.

He wandered back downstairs, sullen, once he was certain the rest of the warehouse was empty. The back room of the ground floor had a Christmas tree in it and he stared at it a moment in a dull fascination. He dragged it out into the main room to set it up. It still had its lights strung, tangled with tinsel and half-broken glass-blown ornaments. Against his better judgment, he found an outlet on the back wall and plugged the tree in.

Smiling to himself, he noted that while most of the lights still worked after all these years, it was still missing a topper. He found himself lost in the slow, hypnotic tumble of the technicolor oils of bubble lights, and contemplating if a star or angel would be better suited to such a fixture in the post-apocalypse.

There was a mattress underneath the stairwell, with a steamer trunk against the wall beside it. Suddenly he didn't feel much like continuing the errand immediately. He crawled up into the sleeping space, and pulled out Daisy's book from his thigh pocket, to read by the light of the tree.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another drug use tw. The implications are getting a little... headier.

The colonial ghoul leaned down to peer at his friend under the stairs.

"Heard I might find ya here."

Geek put a candy wrapper to mark his spot as he closed the Beat book.

"Gave ya some space,” Hancock said, “but I wanted to make sure you were all right after that." He gestured at Geek's leg. "Got into a scrap since we parted company earlier, I see."

No longer oblivious to the injury, the pink ghoul instead ignored it.

"Mind if I join you?” Hancock pulled up a folding chair from nearby. He smiled as he sat, and wagged a vague finger at the holiday ornamentation. “Heh, where'd you even find this thing?"

"Back room. Seemed like a good idea at the time." Geek laid down all the way and glanced up dully at the tree from around the steamer trunk. The bubble lights dazzled his hangover. "Y'can imagine it ain't easy to keep somethin' like this at the vault."

"Imagine not. About the vault..." Hancock slouched with a sigh. "I respect that you're not telling me everything about your folks. Don't misunderstand me here, I'm not asking you to. I get it, if there's things you don't want to say, or... can't. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not forcing ya to go out there if you're not ready."

"It makes me sound like an asshole, to say I'm not."

"No, it just makes it clear to me that it’s not just a moral obligation, to take home what you've learned."

"--Here, this book." He sprawled out on his elbows at the foot of the tree, and held open the pages as he thumbed back a few to find an exact part:

"  _'An' that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearin' the hiss a steam outside, and the creak f'the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceilin' and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. Wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.'_  "

Geek rolled over on his side in the floor, facing away from Hancock, and shut his eye. The hoodlum ghoul picked up the book and eyed the page his friend had had it open to, then shut the wrapper back in it and set it under the tree.

"Damn, is Daisy's taste outright uncanny some days. Goodneighbor is a fine place to find yourself, and separate your you-ness from your ghosts."

Though Geek curled up tighter under the tree, he mentally unclenched when he could tell Hancock had no intention of grilling him.

"Thought I could take my mind off of my problems with the book. But, I can't run from myself any more than you can, I guess. Or anybody. I just. I been up top about a month now. Compare that to how long I stayed in 82. Two centuries, a month feels like two minutes in a day. Two minutes. An' I already gotta go back so soon after I got out? ...Feels like survivor guilt, Hancock. Feels bad. Real bad."

"Come on now, don't be like that. I get where you're coming from. That kind of trip takes time to stock up and prepare for, either way. And not just physically. Traveling the open road has a profound effect on a fellow." Hancock leaned down and smirked at him. "Besides, isn't this all business we're talking? You're supposed to be taking a break from all this shit."

Geek glanced over his shoulder at Hancock, then at length eyed a low branch of the tree.

"You do know you're under a piece of mistletoe, right."

Hancock turned just enough to inspect a broken glass-blown ornament on the bough he was nearest, and slyly grinned back down to Geek.

"And what might that mean?"

"It might mean I'm bullshitting you for a kiss," Geek mumbled. "Mistletoe goes over your head, not on a tree. And... y'stand under it, hopin'... somebody might take a hint..."

"You trying to tell me, you want me to get down under this dusty relic to lie in the floor with another dusty relic?" Hancock oozed coolly out of the chair to comply. "Suppose I can do that." A moment of thoughtful silence transpired as they each, on his back, glanced up into the guts of the technicolor tree. "So... what are we doing under here? --Man, brother, just imagine being under one of these things riding a hit of Jet!"

Geek’s face fumbled, but he turned onto his left side to draw Hancock by the cheek to face him, to firmly kiss him. Hancock approved of being shut up in such a fashion, and returned the building ardor, the first to part his mouth and let his tongue join in. His hat spilled off and the two broke into chuckling as they adhered to one another in a mess of wandering hands.

Fooling around brought to the pink ghoul’s attention all the sundry of scrapes and bruises his afternoon’s activities had apportioned him. There were more bullet wounds than he remembered; he wondered how many Triggermen he’d exterminated. Yet, rather than complain about it, he got off his battered shoulder and straddled Hancock. A dumb smile crossed his face, and he sniffed to hide a wince as he gazed endearingly at him.

The colonial ghoul’s smile soon melted, his marred features neutral with attention. When Geek didn’t understand, Hancock pursed his lips and licked at them.

“You’re... sweating again. You feel as bad as you look?”

Geek got off of him and sat on his knees in the floor. The gloves came off, producing clammy, crusty palms. He fished out from his coveralls a futile work rag, which first wiped down his face, then wrung over and over between his hands. The rag proved somewhat useless, so he took a testing lap at his fingers. When the saliva seemed to help dispatch the bizarre substance, he spat into his hands and worked the spit and metal salts into the rag.

He hoped his companion hadn’t noticed his trembling all the while.

“Yeah... I... I guess you could say y’got me sweatin’, hah. I... I should, I should get back on the contract I took earlier. Oh-- Only a third a the way done.”

Geek stood. Hancock grabbed his ankle and glared up at him from the floor.

“--Hey. You’re not goin’ anywhere without those injuries seen to. I know you need to get a lot of different things out of your system right now, but you’re pushin’ yourself too hard. Take a tic to  _breathe_ , Geek. You might’a just come back from the brink of death, but you’re not bulletproof, my man.”

The tension in Geek’s posture melted into resignation as he met Hancock’s black eyes with hollowness in his own. The ichorous, iridescent sweat continued trickling down his face.

“If I slow down, I can’t keep my brain quiet.”

“...Here...” Hancock kept his grip on Geek, unsure whether his friend might still sprint off, and dug with his free hand in his waistcoat’s inner pocket. He produced a red-ampuole inhaler and offered it up. “You look like you could use this.” Geek looked evenly at it, but didn’t accept the gift. “It’s Jet. Just a laced dose. Hallucinogen, but it works a lot like a downer for me. I’m right here with ya if you’re worried it’ll make things weird.”

The pink ghoul sat down in the floor again, legs crossed, and sighed.

“I never messed with it before the war,” he mumbled, “but I’ve heard lots about it. Sounds like weed, but stronger. This what you been takin’ hits of while we traveled?”

“Yeahhh.” Hancock turned to laze on his side, facing Geek as he propped his head up in one hand. He fidgeted with the chem. “Keeps me mellow when I need mellowing. A great distraction, if you ask me. Laced out, it lasts longer, but it’s not as potent. Might help you better than more liquor.”

Geek took the inhaler from his friend, not wanting him to think he didn’t trust him after what had happened with the Psycho before. When he accepted it, he could read similar worry on Hancock’s bated breath, so he absently patted the delinquent ghoul’s knee.

“You’ll stay here with me, then?”  _I don’t want to be alone._

“Absolutely.”  _I don’t want to leave you alone_.

The relic thought to himself,  _I really oughtta figure a better way to shut up my head. But, today’s not the day for it._  He laid down beside Hancock again, and shot him a fleeting glance before letting out a breath and mouthing the actuator. He depressed the canister and took in the murky, bitter vapor. And with a slow, reeling exhale through his split nostrils, he found himself staring up into the Christmas tree, lost in the kaleidoscope of lights which captivated just as readily as his demons.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW chapter. Hancock prompts a little roughhousing.

Hancock grazed his fingertips along the inside of Geek’s wrist, the two of them still side by side in the floor.

“Looked around a bit before I poked my head under the stairs. Saw all those Triggermen.” He didn’t make eye contact. “Knew you were strong, but to see what you’re capable of...” The delinquent ghoul’s throat itched. “God, I wish I could get on the receiving end of that...”

Geek turned to him, still-haloed gaze concerned. Hancock couldn’t hold in an awkward chuckle, and spoke with an even, quiet tone which was hardly calm.

“...Did I... say that out loud...” When Geek didn’t respond, Hancock ran his fingertips down from Geek’s wrist into his palm, and laced their hands. “You’ve... got such strong hands though... Imagine ‘em around my throat.”

“You’re still talkin’.”

“And you seem like you’re coming down finally.”

“Just how much did you take, Hancock.”

“Enough.”

Hancock grinned and resumed staring blissfully up into the myriad of lights and broken ornaments on the Christmas tree. Geek joined him, shying from keeping their hands entwined.

“...God I’m hungry.”

“Snackish? Ain’t stoppin’ ya from picking fruit off this tree.”

Geek squinted hard in dismissal, not of the suggestion but of the misinterpretation, and reached up to pull a brittle plastic bell off the tree, and vanished it. Then, he turned onto his right side and moved to spoon his friend in the floor, arm hooked under his. He buried his face tight in the small of Hancock’s neck.

“Dunno about you, but this is definitely more comfortable.” Hancock pushed himself against Geek a bit. “You still in the mood after all?”

“I.” Geek brushed his cracked nose under Hancock’s ear, and reached up to caress Hancock’s throat. His scalp tensed. “--I could be.”

Hancock mumbled pleasantly, his hands both wandering up to cradle Geek’s hand.

“Not insisting on anything, but--” Hancock’s voice broke, “--I wasn’t kidding--”

“--I know.”

As Geek mouthed along the slope between Hancock’s neck and shoulder, dark metallic sweat jogged out of him again. He tipped Hancock’s head back as he felt for the soft spaces between the musculature in his throat, and pressed with his thumb and forefinger. The application of force, and the resultant audible viscosity of Hancock’s tightened throat, rent a dialectic in the pink ghoul. The vapors of Jet blurred the consciousness and subconsciousness. The relic worried that he couldn’t be certain whether the chem had jogged his tongue loose as it had John’s, but the urgent deference of what his friend had suggested superseded any personal worries.

He could confide in John. And perform.

With a physical stutter, he dragged Hancock to lay supine atop him to leverage Hancock’s weight against himself. His now-freed right arm hooked Hancock into a face-up half Nelson, the palm firm against the back of Hancock’s head. His left sustained a fast grip on Hancock’s throat, and as it tightened ever so slightly, Hancock arched up and wheezed. Unyielding, Geek ground at length against Hancock’s bucking, pulling a thread of choked moans from his friend. He put his mouth near Hancock’s ear and held him still. Each one’s head pounded for a different reason.

“You’re gonna tell me if I’m hurtin’ you.” Half a question and half a requisite, the statement received only a nod. The pink ghoul nipped at what remained of the other’s degenerated pinna. “Last thing I want is to mess this up, John. You’re the best thing I’ve got.”

Silence deadweighted them as Hancock squirmed and writhed opulently in the grapple. His leg spasmed suddenly in surprise, and Geek panicked and let him sit up.

Hancock pawed at his throat and let out an exasperated and broken “ _fuck_ ,” his eyes lolled in euphoria. The contours of Geek’s grip had cast a relief from his sweat, the metals solidifying and sustaining the pressure the pink ghoul had prior applied. Frantic at the consequence, Geek flipped him down back-first on the floor, and navigated to lap at the cast in an attempt to loose it. Delirious, Hancock wrapped his arms around him, inviting the oral attention, and they found themselves grinding against each other with little coaxing. After a bit, Geek’s saliva softened the metal enough that Hancock could peel it off. Once freed, Hancock sprawled out with the metal leaf in one hand, and rasped pathetically.

“Are you okay?”

Geek stared down at him as they both recovered.

“-- _Never been better._ ”

A gradual realization crept up on a delirious Hancock and he broke into a tired laugh.

“What?”

The ghoul reached up and touched the back of his head.

“Really... --leavin’ a mark--”

Just as the hand at Hancock’s throat had left a cast, so had the other against his scalp. When animation got Hancock coughing, Geek hugged onto him protectively and started into the same method of dislodging the sweat as before. Hancock couldn’t help but alternate between laughing and coughing.

“Hold-- still--”

“ _Never_ \--”

They transitioned into roughhousing again, only to freeze at hearing a huge, rustling thud. The Christmas tree had fallen over, ornaments scattering. They died laughing. Geek dragged Hancock up under the stairwell and onto the half-rotten mattress, and they cuddled up.

“We just gonna... leave that?”

Hancock kicked off his boots, and this time was the one to spoon Geek, who took the outer side of the bedding.

“I’ll deal with it later.” Geek strained to reach far enough to unplug it without disentangling. The warehouse space lost some lighting, and the dimness comforted the relic as he settled back down. “Just like everything else. I’m... I’m real tired. Ache all over.”

“Don’t think you’ve slept since you... whatever that was in North End. You should get some shuteye. We should... get some shuteye.”

A silence transpired, and Hancock was almost certain Geek had drifted off.

“...John?”

“Yeah?”

“You  _are_  okay, yeah?”

“That. It was wonderful.” The ghoul brushed his noseless nostrils along Geek’s nape and let out a vaguely lyrical breath. “Are you all right?”

“I wouldn’t mind doin’ it again, if that’s what you’re askin’.” The relic shifted a bit. “Gloves on, though, next time.”

“...Maybe.”

“Next you’ll tell me you want me to clamp shut y’mouth like that.”

“You’re killin’ me.”

“Only sexually.”

“You’re a damn tease. I like that.”

“Wonder what all else you like...”

“I like you, Geek. What can I say? The whole package.”

“Remains t’be seen, but a man can hope an’ dream.”

“Both of us are gonna be sore come morning, y’know.”

“...Worth it.” Another silence. “I think I love you.”

“The suspicion’s mutual.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The streams are crossing...

A few days later, for most of the afternoon Geek toiled over KL-E-O’s workbench, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. With the belt sander, he sharpened his latest project. His wrench-shiv served as a reverse tang of sorts, atop which he practiced controlling his metallic sweat, building up its blade with whatever his palms would excrete. Occasionally, he would lick his fingers, or the knife directly, to slick down the material into curves. What flowed readily seemed mostly lead and tin, and the approximation of his sweeping, jagged work of art to solder was not lost to his amusement, as he smoothed and added, smoothed and added, time and again picking at it until he felt less dissatisfied than before. The piece ended up something between a machete and a karambit, but both the heft and functional shapes pleased him. A series of stylized keyholes trailed the center, and a pair of exaggerated false edges swept both the tip and base of the spine of the blade. He wondered whether he could control the concentrations of the alloys that his pores eliminated, by means besides mitigating his diet.

The sickle-like curvature of the false edges evoked the notion of  _Cronus_. Lead was associated with Saturn, wasn’t it? Classical mythology had filled one of the books in his collection at the vault. It was decorum, to name a blade such as this, a testament that he could weaponize the trauma and from it forge constructive artifacts. Alchemy, he mused to himself. He’d have to futz with his knuckles, if Cronus could prove itself.

Kill or Be Killed had an open store front right on the plaza. As the pink ghoul honed the forming weapon, he noticed across the way in his peripheral, someone come through the one entry into Goodneighbor: a Mister Handy with a ton of wrong parts. He stopped working to watch, absently intrigued as the pale blue hovering mishmash of robotics paused in the plaza, only to zip down the alley.

“ _That_ \--”

Geek wrapped up his mostly-finished project in a piece of canvas and tucked it in a thigh pocket, to sprint out after the robot. Somebody had been riding on the domed back of that robot. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the dreg, but he didn’t have to, to know they fit the description.

 _Did he really manage it?_  Geek thought to himself, scanning the once Scollay Square to tail the robot-riding idiot.  _Anybody smart enough would’a taken the chance to skip town without wearin’ Hancock’s crosshairs. Why the hell would he come back?_

The Neighborhood Watch ghouls on duty at the front face of the Third Rail noticed Geek’s demeanor and gestured at the double doors with their rifles. He nodded with a slouch and jogged in. Ham, the ghoul bouncer in a black pinstripe suit, started to say something to him, but he patted Ham on the shoulder without stopping on his way down the stairs to the subway loading platform that had transformed into the settlement’s illustrious bar. Now that he knew what Jet smelled like, he recognized the previous elusive sweet-stink to the humid atmosphere down here.

A quick skim of the main hall yielded nothing. Losing interest, he approached Charlie for a drink.

“Ah, it’s you again. Gotta thank you again for taking care of that rat problem before. Sure you’re interested t’hear I’ve added the mineral variety to the spirits I pour out.”

“Very.” He doused a few caps on the counter while the Handy reached under the counter to produce the requested tin of turpentine.

“You might also like t’hear the mayor’s in the VIP Lounge at the moment. Something about a private meetin’.” Charlie began to polish at a glass with its pincer-tipped tentacle-limbs. “Seemed like you were followin’ somebody when you first came in, and the timing suggests to me he’s your man.”

Geek sprinkled a few more caps where the first dozen or so had been, as gratuity, and patted at the counter with endearment.

“Exactly what I needed, Charlie. Thanks.”

He took the tin with him to the back room, strung with cage lights, and eavesdropped on the meeting from the corridor that led into the lounge itself. The pale blue Handy idled at one end of the room, while the vault dweller sat on a couch at the far wall, fidgeting with a cane in his lap. Though he couldn’t see around the corner, he could hear that Hancock and Fahrenheit sat opposite the dweller. Yeah, he had a Pipboy, too--but was it his? This frail guy looked in his forties, huge round white-rim glasses, had an undershaven black ponytail that had half-fallen into his face, and wore a tailored single-breasted off-white suit. There seemed to be a high white leather gorget with dark seams beneath the cream dress shirt--no, it was medical gear. It all made sense now. The braces, the cane... and his Frankenstein of a Handy. It doubled as a wheelchair, didn’t it?

“-- _And you’re lucky I didn’t die_ ,” Fahrenheit seethed. “Still stiff as fuck.”

“I-- I am,” the dreg stuttered out. “I panicked. When I came to town, I didn’t know who to trust, and when it came out Bobbi had played me an’ Mel. I couldn’t make sense of the situation in the moment. Makin’ it  _look_  like I’d greased you an’ your guards was the only way I thought I could get away with not killing anybody.” He bit at his lower lip and stared at his Handy as it floated there. “I don’t regret having to take care of Bobbi like that, but I sure am glad I didn’t have to get rid of Mel. He didn’t know who he was working a job on any more than I did.”

Listening to the guy nagged at Geek. It had been carefully groomed over time, but that was unmistakably a Russian accent.

“And what of the caps we negotiated, hm?”

The guy flinched at Hancock’s threat-loaded question.

“Can’t we-- work something else out?”

“Reading my mind. Finn in the dirt, and Bobbi written off, I’m lacking brawn  _and_  brains. You were crafty enough to swindle me, and resourceful enough to adjust the playing field in real time--quickly--to compensate for...  _mistakes_. That sounds like the makings of an idea man. Definitely the kind of Nimrod I want  _even closer_ , if you catch my meaning.”

Geek spat out a mouthful of spirits. Knowing he’d given himself away, he walked in. Hancock patted at the free spot of the couch beside him opposite Fahr, both of whom were relieved to see it was just him. The mayor threw his arms around both of them once Geek sat.

“Just the ghoul I wanted to see.”

“You gotta be kidding me, Hancock,” he started, taking a fresh swig of turpentine as he gawked back and forth between the dreg and his boyfriend. “This guy blew up your strongroom and drained it dry, and he damn near killed Fahr. An’ ain’t it his fault Finn’s dead?”

Shaken beyond composure, the dreg produced a flask from his waistcoat pocket, and took after Geek. Though the jamjar lenses obscured the exact way he was looking at the pink ghoul, he was sure he could tell exactly what the dreg was thinking. Everyone  _always_  reacted badly to his complexion.

“Melancholy, this is Geek. Geek, Melancholy.”

Hancock stopped picking at his fingernails with his hunting knife and pulled out two cigarettes. The ghoul briefly borrowed Fahr’s cigar to stoke them off the cherry before handing it back, then offered Geek one while he took the other for himself. Geek stared, displeased, at this  _Melancholy_  dreg and, without breaking eye contact, swallowed his turpentine cap before taking the smoke from Hancock. ‘Choly straightened and tried to stifle an awkward chuckle, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“The pleasure’s all his, I’m sure,” Geek said.

“Oh. Ohh, it is.” ‘Choly sniffed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I assure you, it is.” Geek’s face soured at this.

“...Ain’t about t’tell you how t’run y’town, but you  _trust_  this loon after what he did?”

“I trust the Mayor’s judgment on this, long as 'Choly keeps that damn  _bloatfly gun_ holstered in town.” Fahr snarled in disgust, and put out her well-chewed cigar on the arm of the couch before flicking the butt across the room into the cardboard box in the corner. “Never want to see anything like that again in my life. Still having nightmares. Gonna have nightmares for weeks.”

‘Choly couldn’t help but smile and murmur in sly reminiscent pride.

“I-- am not gonna ask.” Geek rubbed at his forehead a minute with his smoke hand, already wearing conversational exhaustion on his face. “Y’wanted t’see me, though?”

“Sure you heard most of our conversation up to now,” Hancock mumbled warmly, pulling him closer by the shoulder. “I’m filling recently... vacated positions. If he’s the brains, you’d certainly make great brawn, love.”

Geek slipped out of the mayor’s arm and sat next to ‘Choly, and squeezed his knee with sustained eye contact. He noted that he could feel the hinges of leg braces, as he’d suspected, beneath the slacks. Up close, he could see white splotches mottled the right side of the dreg’s face, and a scar slashed his lower lip.

“What vault you say you was from again?”

‘Choly pushed Geek’s hand off his knee with both hands, squirming in discomfort, then looked back up at him and clasped his cane firmly.

“I-- I’m from Concord. One-eleven. Why?”

The cigarette twitched in Geek’s lips.

“It’s just I don’t get it. Who fucked up and let a  _Commie_  in a vault?” ‘Choly wrung at his cane, put on the spot. “Who’d you kill for that Pipboy, mh?”

‘Choly stared at him from over the top of his glasses, cataracted eyes glazed and jaundiced.

“--I could ask you the same thing, you... you pink Plymouth. You’re from a  _functional_  vault, I’m guessing?”

Geek swallowed his lit cigarette, incredulous, and barely kept himself from decking the dreg.

“Gentlemen!” the Handy interjected, unnerved. “There’s no use in being contrary. Isn’t that right, Sir?”

“It’s all right, Angel.” Indignity softening, he looked Geek up and down as he adjusted his glasses again, more for emphasis than need. “He’s easy on the eyes, even if his belfry’s not all in order.”

“Now--” Hancock bolted up before he crossed his arms and cooled himself into a chuckle. “Geek’s one thing you  _aren’t_  gonna get away with stealing from me.”

Geek sputtered a laugh and leaned onto his knees, cradling his face into one hand. ‘Choly glanced between them, overtaken by a deep flush. Fahr rolled her eyes, and decided to kick her feet up across the couch since Hancock had begun to pace.

“If you’re interested in sticking around town, you might do well to go speak to Clair in the Rexford,” the mayor urged. “All I’m asking is you think about my proposition, ‘Choly.”

“Oh, he’ll proposition you,” Fahr grunted. “Damn sleaze.”

‘Choly ignored her and looked expectantly to Hancock.

“So you’re... you’re not running me out of town, then?”

“Long as you’re good for business, rather than disrupting it.” The mayor grinned. “Fred tells me you make some mean Mentats. Gonna have to prove it.”

“I, yes. Definitely. Definitely!” ‘Choly put up his flask and patted his chest where he’d put it, then leveraged his cane to stand. Approaching Hancock, he offered a gloved handshake and took the mayor’s in both of his. “Let me sleep on it, Mayor. I’ll... I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“All right, now.” Hancock grinned and patted him on the shoulder with his free hand. “Shoo. Mingle. And try not to put  _both_  feet in your mouth?”

As 'Choly and his Handy exited shrewdly, the sound of his cane-gait shadowed their departure. Hancock walked over to Geek, who’d stood with the transparent intent to follow the newcomer again.

“Y’really trust a Red to finance Goodneighbor?” Geek asked him, the three of them leaving the lounge as well. “A Red who ripped you off?”

“It’s been two centuries since one’s nationality was a reliable measure of their credibility, Geek. My sources tell me that lil’ Ruski dismantled an entire raider operation just a few months back. The survivors aren’t even confident they’ve got an accurate account of what happened, it happened so fast. He might not look like anything, but he’s a whip.” Hancock glanced to him with a stern pleasantry. “Nobody’s stoppin’ ya from keeping an eye on him, if your gut feeling is strong. But try not to run him off before he gives me his answer, okay?”

The pink ghoul finished off his turpentine, and watched as ‘Choly mounted the cloth stirrups of his Handy, and the two scaled the stairs and vanished rounding up to street level.

“You bet your ass I’m keepin’ my eye on him.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drug use tw. Not sure what exactly Hancock sees in Melancholy, besides a ticket to all those sweet, sweet Mentats.

Light rain moistened everything as Geek stepped foot on street level again, emerging from the Third Rail. He tugged at the hood of his coveralls and glanced around what the denizens of Goodneighbor considered their small town square, scattered with park benches and framed with a sardine-packing of warehouses. Rather than doubling back toward the plaza, he took to the left of the Statehouse and shielded a fresh cigarette with one hand while he lit it.

This ass was just about the last thing he needed right now, he thought to himself as he walked. Shanties of scrap wood, corrugated metal, and car shells crowded each end of the street, a good chunk of the town’s population inhabiting them where no other housing manifested itself. Stopping shy of the west end of the street, the pink ghoul glanced up briefly at the hotel: a crumbling artifact of art deco architecture, with its thick, imposing concrete portico and the verdegris-veined bronze face jutting like a queasy gargoyle from its front. Its top stories had since toppled, but it seemed the lowest three survived. Bold, simple neon letters cast red across the entryway: Hotel Rexford. Malcontent with his smoke, he flicked it down and smashed it with the tread of his work boot.

Entering the hotel, a double-high ceiling and its mangy crystal chandelier greeted him, with a second-story balcony banister open over the reception desk. To one side had once been a small bar, while to the other had been apportioned several couches to form a seating area. Porting a stained pale pinstripe suit and short-cropped dense white hair, the black woman at the desk spoke with Melancholy as his Mr. Handy idled beside him.

“Third floor, last door on the right.” She handed ‘Choly the key and glanced up to Geek. “If you’re looking for a room, you’re S.O.L. We’re full up now.”

‘Choly looked to find Geek behind him and buckled into his cane.

“Thanks, but no.” Geek stepped up into ‘Choly’s personal space, to which the dreg sniffed, crinkling his nose. “Can I help you to your room?”

Before ‘Choly could respond, the Handy chimed in, chipper.

“Grateful for the offer, but I believe I can handle Sir’s effects.”

“You sure?” he asked ‘Choly specifically. “That’s a lot of stairs, an’ I doubt the elevator’s still in order.”

Geek kept his eye on his new acquaintance. ‘Choly curled his lip at him and turned to take the hallway behind the reception desk.

“If you’re dead set on being my godawful shadow, come on.”

Both his Handy and Geek followed, a slow and deliberate procession.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t like me to help you up the stairs?” the Handy asked, knowing full well that if its owner had wanted help, he’d have requested it.

The rhetorical question received silence.

The further they got from the radio in the lobby, the more isolated the rhythmic clicking of ‘Choly’s cane and leg braces became. As they walked down the hall of the third floor, Geek could hear the dreg was breathing heavy despite going at his own pace all the while. Once they got to the room, ‘Choly unlocked the door and stared a hole in it, not opening it just yet.

“Angel, could you wait out here?”

“Sir--”

“You can go down to the lobby and chat with the people down there, if you like. Just don’t leave the building, all right?”

“Yes, Sir.” It remained in the hall while the other two went into the room.

Geek slouched into the couch at the first opportunity and started on another cigarette while ‘Choly shut the door behind them. 'Choly set his cane against the desk in the corner, and took the quilted wingback armchair.

“What’s all this about?” The Russian removed his glasses and set them on the desk. “You don’t strike me as the type to be caught up in hospitality.”

“Why’d you come back to Goodneighbor?”

“I had to make things right with the mayor.” He opened the pencil drawer, absently hoping the room’s last inhabitant had forgotten anything. “Am I not welcome here?”

“It’s gotta be more than just patching things up between you an’ Hancock.”

“I didn’t know he was taken. If you have to know.” He took a vial from his waistcoat pocket and uncorked it to drink it in one mouthful, then snorted in fleeting displeasure as he set down the empty vessel on the desk. “Doesn’t seem to matter much, though, does it?” He made eye contact at last. “I’m here now, and I like it here. I feel... this place is a perfect fit for someone of my sensibilities.”

The tips of Geek’s ears burned.

“So what gives with that come-on earlier, then? You flirt with every piece of meat you see?”

“I know choice cuts when I see them.” The corner of ‘Choly’s mouth twitched as he licked at his teeth, his glazed gaze seeming to fall behind Geek rather than upon him. “The mayor’s proposition that I’d fit snugly into Goodneighbor’s commerce feels spot on. There’s so many clients here to serve.”

“And just what exactly is it you intend t’sell?”

‘Choly shot him a calm grin, then pushed off the arms of the chair to stand, picking up the empty ampuole on his way over. At first, Geek thought he was going to sit beside him, but instead the dreg draped himself languorously across Geek’s lap and clumsily put the Daddy-O ampuole to the pink ghoul’s lips.

“My first customer, and I haven’t even set up shop?” He gave Geek a smolder. “I’d call it word of mouth, but I know better."

Furrowing his lower lip at him, Geek snapped at 'Choly’s fingertips to get the whole vial in his mouth, and swallowed it with a small snarl.

“You fascinate me.”

“Can’t get a bead on you, either.”

Geek took a hit off his cigarette and held it in as he leaned down inches from ‘Choly, before unloading all the smoke through his gashed nostrils into ‘Choly’s face. A little more content now as the dreg tried not to cough, Geek slumped his arms along the back of the couch to get another puff at his cigarette, fermenting on the sheer sleaze of the guy.

“You’ll swallow just about anything, won’t you.”

“Not interested in your meat market.”

‘Choly sat up abruptly, lips pursed as he glared at him in mortification.

“You thought I-- Oh, nooooo.” A ragged laugh came out of him. “I’m a chemist.”

Geek had had enough and shoved him off into the floor with a grunt, bringing ‘Choly to sprawling stitches of tittering. The pink ghoul’s skin crawled as his lip curled at the idiot.

“Fuck, you’re high.”

“I’m not much fun to be around when I’m not, to be fair.”

“Cut the shit. Suppose you really did come from Vault 111. I gotta know.” Geek squinted in recollection. “The fuck was all the liquid nitrogen for?”

‘Choly’s face fell slack as his head rolled along the wood floor to look up at him.

“You don’t know?”

Geek leaned onto his shoulders, sustaining eye contact until ‘Choly broke it to resume staring at the sloughing ceiling.

“Answer my question.”

“Cryogenics,” ‘Choly blurted out. “I was... frozen. Before the bombs fell. Only just woke up this year.”

The pink ghoul didn’t like that much.

“You tryin’ t’tell me you’re prewar?”

“I, yes. If you want to put it that way.”

“ _Frozen?_ ” Geek choked on it. “You can’t tell me anything about your vault, then? The living conditions? The scientists?”

The glaze in ‘Choly’s eyes started to come from more than just the chems, and he shut them and turned his back to Geek.

“Everyone else... their life support failed years ago. The staff all killed each other or themselves when they ran out of rations. The... roaches. So many roaches...” He rubbed at his right forearm compulsively, staring off under the dresser against the far wall. “So cold.”

Geek stood, his rigid posture shaking as he glared down at the junkie. The cigarette fell from his mouth.

“--Hey now, you jackass. Don’t go hallucinatin’ on me.”

“It’s all just... memory lane... isn’t it?” ‘Choly turned onto his back after a bit and stared vacantly up at him. “I told you what you wanted. Say, you’re from a vault, too. I take it the way this conversation has gone means your vault  _didn’t_  utilize cryogenics. If they didn’t freeze you, what  _did_  they do to you?”

Geek’s face screwed up and ‘Choly flinched. He put his foot back down with balled fists, having caught himself about to stomp the dreg, and he clenched his teeth but failed to keep himself from sweating.

“Not a single damn vault was designed to work right! An’ each an’ every last one had somethin’ different wrong with it!”

“Something wrong with it...? Does that mean all that isn’t just face paint?”

The pink ghoul flew down on his knees to grab a fistful of ‘Choly’s shirt, wild-eyed as his hood fell back.

“Face paint! Does this look like fucking face paint to you!” He shoved ‘Choly back down in the floor, ruffled by his ragdoll act, and, once he’d located his cigarette, got back up. “Don’t get what your damage is, but I’m through with this. You’re a mess.”

“I’m not the only one...”

As Geek let himself out, he could hear the junkie giggling in the floor. He rejected the cigarette rather than relight it, suddenly feeling like they weren’t strong enough anymore.


	29. Chapter 29

Muttering under his breath, Geek stormed back to the southern end of Goodneighbor.

“How the fuck did  _that_  rip off Hancock?”

He kicked at a chunk of pavement.

“Junkie! Fuckin’ loon!”

He let the fuming putter him back into Kill or Be Killed. Brushing off everyone in his path, he resumed grinding away at refining Cronus. The blade felt overworked in his hands, and he wondered whether the task itself simply dissatisfied him. Still in a state of unrest, he sheathed the knife again and ducked into the Statehouse to assess his stock for what else might serve to preoccupy him.

The pink ghoul knelt in the floor of his room and rifled through his duffel bag for the box of power armor leg parts, and the tool aprons. He’d bought them off Tinker Tom to maximize the utility of the lower half of his armor. Now struck him as the ideal time to make use of them, but instead he set down the materials and laid down atop the sleeping bag.

He snacked dulled at one of his boxes of .44 bullets. Daisy’s Discounts housed the only reliable, easy-access conglomeration of sewing, cutting, and welding tools in town. He’d hoped to continue obviating that impending conversation, especially not following up the one he’d just had with Melancholy. After a while, he sat up and fished out  _On the Road_  from the duffel and laid back down with it, until it was too dark outside to read by the light from the poorly-boarded window.

Ultimately he resigned to knowing he owed it to Daisy, to see her before he saw Carrington again. He kicked himself for how even now he shied from the mere thought of it. While he steeled himself for it, he angrily paced and polished off the rest of his tub of shortening.

Geek walked into Daisy’s store as though nothing had changed since they’d last spoken, and he immediately unloaded all his materials onto her workbench and got started on his customizations. He pulled the stool up under him a little closer and opened the box of power armor pieces, humming as he eyeballed exactly how they went together.

“You could have just ask--” The prewar ghoul looked up from her magazine to recognize him from behind. “Geek, why the cold shoulder? You know I don’t mind if you use my equipment.”

He finished unbuckling his leg armor so he could compare the metal components to the leather ones. Then, he casually glanced up at her from around the edge of his hood before deciding to try comparing his own leg against the frame of the metal components.

“Had a lot on my mind.”

She slouched back on her stool and closed the periodical.

“Are you mad at me for not coming to your little welcome home party? I felt real sorry that I had to stay up here to tend the store.”

“Ain’t mad.” When he tried the other leg against his, too, he could tell he had the legs switched. “It's just. I still haven’t finished readin’ that book. Keep startin’ it, and I can’t get into it long enough to do more’n pick at it. Dunno if it’s just me, but it’s hard to follow. Like the narrator can’t focus or somethin’.”

“Is that all this is?” She chuckled. “You’re not the only one. Pretty sure the guy wrote the narrator like that on purpose, just to piss us off.”

“Us specifically?” He echoed her amusement.

“You and me, both pissed off at the same poor Beat lowlife who died long before the world ever ended. Look, Hancock told me what happened. I know you’re trying to make it so I don’t see, but what I don’t know is why.”

He set down the pieces on the bench with a sigh and swiveled around to face her, with a sorry look as he pushed back his hood. She smiled, her sinews and wrinkles kind.

“Well, if you weren’t a ghoul before, you sure are now. Handsome as you ever were, my boy. What’s important is whether you’re feeling like yourself again. What’s really eating you?”

He whirled back to working on his armor.

“Plenty. Where do I start? Melancholy sounds like a good place to start. Little weasel’s back, and stayin’ long term. Can’t stand the idea of leavin’ that loon here in Goodneighbor unsupervised. Sure Hancock hasn’t told everybody yet he invited that piece of work to push chems here. How does he trust him? Have faith in him? Have you met him yet? He’s wretched.”

The pink ghoul finally had to give cigarettes another go.

“He doesn’t have to trust him, and he’ll prove whether he’s worth having faith in. This is Hancock we’re talking about. He knows his chess game. Besides, Hancock’s not the only one with an invested eye on business practices in this town. And if he’s pushing chems, he’s going to have to answer to Marowski eventually.”

“...Haven’t met the guy.”

“Not likely to. Unless you’re handling chems--then you’re guaranteed to. Gruff, hardened teddy bear, if you ask me. Runs his operations out of the Rexford.” She walked back to her fridge and cracked open a bottle to drink. “Beer?”

“Y’got any more shortening?”

“Dunno, have you got money?” She plopped the requested junk down on the bench as she drank her pilsner, and stood there looking him over with one arm akimbo, the other palm open in expectation. “That’ll be twenty caps, sweetie.”

He wedged the filter in his lips and with a smirk deposited twenty-five in her hand, cupping hers in both of his.

“A gratuity for the beautiful and gracious waitstaff.”

“The caps are nice, but flattery will get you everywhere. Since when were you loaded?"

“Past-tense. The Third Rail to-do liberated me of that burden.” Once he’d put up his food ration for later, he continued working at aligning components, using a nearby grease pencil to lay guidelines for fresh seams. “I just don’t get it, Daisy. The junkie has the people skills of a clam shell and the fortitude of a worm. How’d he swindle Hancock? What’s John see in him I can’t?”

“That’s a chem habit for you, I suppose. Do you think ill of Hancock’s habits, too, then?”

“I, no. It’s just--”

“There’s two kinds of people in Goodneighbor, the way I see it: those trying to escape who they used to be, and those irreverently and freely themselves. Sometimes, a chem habit’s the former. Often, it’s the latter.” Daisy rubbed her palms. “The mayor’s who he is because of the chems, quite literally. The same just might be true for Melancholy.”

Until that moment, Geek hadn’t considered whether he had yet met the sober side of Hancock, and it wrung him in place to think what sort of disparity might lay between the two versions of the delinquent ghoul. Had he fallen for Hancock, or the chems in him? Unable to linger on the notion too long, he instead steadied his attention on Melancholy while he cut and stitched stitched fresh loop-straps for affixing armatures.

“You tryin’ t’tell me chem use likely accounts for how ‘Choly was able to work that heist?”

“That, and you also forget he didn’t do it alone. There’s a lot to be said of cooperation, especially when the teammates know one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Cover each other’s bases--and asses.” She polished off the beer and added the bottle to a junk box for sale, then grabbed a second and went back to her stool with it. “I think, ultimately, what you need is the chance to see what the guy’s got in him.”

For a while, only the sounds of the sewing machine and soldering iron punctuated their conversation.

“What can you tell me about Bobbi an’ Finn?”

The prewar ghoul set down her half-finished second beer and leaned her elbows onto the counter to rest her chin on her hands in thought. Her dark, sly eyes easily read between the lines.

“Supposing you’re not so much asking for a history lesson, as you are asking what void they left.”

“Hancock’s... been strategizin’ to have me an’ Melancholy step up where Finn an’ Bobbi stepped off. I never met either of ‘em, but I know they’ve got big shoes in the mayor’s eyes. If that pans out like he wants, I’m gonna... have to know what Melancholy can do. Am I bein’ too hard on the creep?”

Daisy kept her gaze on him at length before sitting up again, rubbing her lips together in thought.

“Now that’s. Certainly an unexpected development. I’d have thought for sure, with him skipping town with you last week, he’d want to give things more time before reestablishing what he voiced felt like too much public control. But at the same time, he’s a master at playing games, and he’s always been spontaneous and immovable when he makes his mind up about teammates.” Her foot tapped under the counter, and she smiled a bit to herself. “Teammates. Do you think you’re game to hearing me out about that job I’ve got for you?”

“Depends on what it is.” Geek grunted a bit as he wrestled with a troublesome infrastructural strap. “What’d you have in mind?”

“One of my fondest memories was my trips to the library, as a little girl... before, when I was still human. Who knows what those super mutants have done to the place. Probably using the books for kindling. Makes my blood boil just thinking about it.” She shot him an enormous grin which belied her rage. “I think the three of you’d mop up the building just fine.”

“The way you read me at a glance, guess I oughtta trust y’measure of this dreg. An’ y’been around Goodneighbor long enough to know what Hancock’s like...” He got to the filter and swallowed it. “Reclaimin’ the library don’t sound like a half bad idea. I think you’re onto somethin’.”

“I’ve been here since before Hancock ever breezed in. Aaand I tend to have pretty good ideas.”

The gradual warm-up got Geek grinning too.

“Dais’, I wouldn’t be surprised with how well you read people, that y’not the real brains of Goodneighbor.”

“I’ve got my clout. If that sounds like something you could do for me, talk it over with Hancock and Melancholy. You’ll make a ghoul proud.” She finished off her beer and walked over to him with something she’d picked up from under the countertop. “While you’re there, you can return  _On the Road_  and  _Time Machine_  both. Put some ghosts to rest, hm?”

He took it from her and looked it over before tucking it into a pocket inside his coveralls.

“I can do that.” He tried on his fresh leg braces and stood to test them, and paced a bit to gauge how noisy they might be. The mechanisms proved a lot quieter than he’d thought they’d be, but still made too much sound, so he sat down and flayed them out on the bench to try his hand at oiling them and calibrating them. “You like the book any more’n I liked mine?”

“The Commonwealth’s come a long way in the past two hundred years. Who’s to say where we’ll be in another two?” The ghoul store-owner gave him a hard pat on the shoulder. “While you’re on this library errand, you ought to scout out what other books survived. Surely, you’ll find something more to your interest.”

“You can count on me, Daisy.” The pink ghoul got caught up in his task, drawn away from reality and inside himself.  _An’ maybe if this works out, the Railroad can count on me, too._


	30. Chapter 30

The drizzle transitioned to a full downpour, but Geek still stood in it in the plaza regardless. Features drooped and haggard, he puttered at length over his course of action. His gait-stabilizing modifications to his leg armor comforted him--all the extensions and other upgrades he’d made to his now well-oiled leather armor did--but they did little to temper his demeanor. The instant he settled on a direction, he halted. Had it not been raining, he’d have sooner cut through the Statehouse than around it; but as it was, he didn’t suppose he’d be any less wet either way, by the time he got to where he was going.

_You chicken, don’t make John ask him for you. If you stay here, you gotta acclimate to the locals no matter what._

When he stepped into the Rexford again, he stopped mere steps inside. Two gentlemen milled about idly, as though awaiting something that didn’t include him. From their state of dress, one struck him as a janitorial type, the other some kind of merchant. But his blinders tunneled to Melancholy walking down the hall behind the front desk, with his Mr. Handy trailing behind him.

“You again.” The clerk clapped her hand on the counter at Geek with an annoyed gaze, as he tried to sneak by. “I told you there’s no vacancy.”

“I’m not staying,” he insisted. “I’ve got to--”

“This day only continues to worsen.” Melancholy sighed and turned to him, having noticed Geek came back. “I thought you said you were through trying to talk to me.”

“I--” Geek unzipped his coveralls a bit in an attempt to start drying out, and squirmed, welcoming not having to chase down the dreg at the nuisance of the staff. “I wasn’t bein’ fair before. Gimme a second chance?”

The Russian couldn’t help but let out a dry, skeptical laugh. He leaned forward into his chain-wrapped cane and gave the pink ghoul a small smirk.

“So you do like me--”

“--Pushin' it.” Geek grunted, rubbing at his brow. “It’s just. Come sit with me and talk a tic?”

‘Choly stifled an eye roll but complied. The two rounded back to the mismatched couches in the lobby, but the Handy didn’t excuse itself this time, idling nearby its owner at what must have come across as a vague sense of threat to him. The sweet-stink of burning Handy fuel nettled Geek a bit, and he did his best to ignore it. Both of them sat on a different piece of furniture.

“What is it now?”

“You deserve a chance to trial into this arrangement just as much as we do. I gotta proposition, and I’m hopin’ it sounds like somethin’ that would interest you. A chance to decide if you’d even  _want_  to tell the mayor yes.”

Geek noticed that the other two men in the lobby had made themselves scarce after the clerk had gotten short with him, but he wondered if they remained nearby to eavesdrop. Although he didn’t have a better place to have this conversation, he still worried public transparency might go over badly, before Hancock had made a formal return to office. He leaned in nearer, hoping the dreg would do the same. ‘Choly did, and kept his voice lower than the radio.

“He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

“Not yet. We’ll need to talk to him next, and hope he’s on board. Figure it’ll interest him even more’n it does either of us, but this’ll brook you into real good standing around here if we can pull it off. There’s super mutants holed up in the Boston Library right now. Building aside, reclaiming it and planting Goodneighbor’s name on it... Y’not stupid. I can imagine you understand just exactly what re-establishing a library in the Commonwealth can mean.”

‘Choly adjusted his glasses a moment, thinking carefully how to respond. Geek waited, watching to see how such a thing sounded to a  _prewar_  individual.

“All manner of public services, I suppose... A library is a safe haven, common ground of information, resources, and opportunities, open to anyone who needs these. A lot like Goodneighbor in spirit. Mm, all I can think of is all the books those...  _things_  must be ruining. All that knowledge. Very Alexandrian. Very distressing.” ‘Choly sniffed, and brushed at something on his sleeve. “You’re not trying to scare me off, are you?”

“As much as I’d  _love_  it if you left--” Geek sank into his poor enthusiasm. “As much as you’d love to think otherwise of me, I want to give you a chance. Really, I do. An’ Hancock’s right. If you’ve got the mettle to work him over like that when y’put y’mind to it, you’ve certainly got it in ya t’work together with him an’ me on this. I know he’s gonna say yes, but what about you? You trust  _us_  enough?”

“Well.” The Russian straightened with an even gaze. “I’m not going to do it for free, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 _He’s really doin’ this..._  The pink ghoul sneered into himself and reached into the inner pouch of one pauldron. He leaned into 'Choly’s personal space, pinching a poorly folded fifty dollar bill, and wafted it with vague ennui under the dreg’s nose. Geek tucked the cash into the breast-welt pocket of his white jacket, then patted it with glaring eye contact. After a moment he let out a single chuckle through his gashed nostrils and slouched back, helping himself to a cigarette.

“Cash?” ‘Choly’s voice cracked, putting his gloved fingertips to the bill that had been slipped behind his ochre pocket square, before tucking it back in. “Are you really only offering me  _fifty dollars_  to do this for you? That’s a public library. It’s enormous.”

“Don’t bullshit me like you’re less happy with cash than y’would be with caps.”

“Caps are certainly easier to spend,” he snipped, producing from a coat pocket a silver cigarette case and placing one into a black-and-ivory holder. He pointed at Geek with his smoking hand after taking a hit off it. “No exchange rate for caps.”

“A fifty’s all I can afford right now. I can tell you’re interested, otherwise you wouldn’t be hagglin’ me. Look, I’m payin’ ya up front. What else can I say would sweeten the pot for you, besides knowing for a fact how over the moon Hancock’s gonna be?”

‘Choly stood and rounded the coffee table to Geek’s side. He leaned down into his cane, his extensive head-to-toe orthopedic braces eminent in his angular and uneven posture, and he lingered in the ghoul’s personal space, wearing a thin broad smile as he gesticulated with his smoking hand.

“Tell me how much  _you’ll_  like the results.” Up close, the dreg’s cataracted hazel eyes discomfited Geek more than they ought have, and the ghoul was grateful that, at a distance, ‘Choly’s jam-jar lenses exhibited a censoring quality. ‘Choly smirked, heavy-lidded. “I want... a kiss to seal the deal.”

Rather than verbalize the indignity, Geek palmed one cheek to steady ‘Choly’s face, and dragged his tongue up his entire cheek, and he slouched back again to observe with feigned boredom. With a ragged startled breath, the Russian jarred to right himself fully, unable to fully process the sensation at first. He smiled and hooked his cane over his smoking arm. When he fished out a kerchief and wiped it off, he noticed the silken texture change rapidly. The moisture had charred the handkerchief upon inspection, and ‘Choly swallowed, putting it back in the back pocket of his slacks.

“...I’m quickly learning I’m not the only mutated freak drawn in by the magnetism of Goodneighbor.”

“You’re learning. That’s something  _I’m_  happy t’hear.”

The Russian waved for his robot, who came over from having been straightening the wet bar at the opposite end of the lobby.

“Yes, Sir?”

“We’re going over to the Statehouse. Accompany me, please. And I’d like my shuba and ushanka, please.”

“Absolutely.”

As it complied offering forth the garments from its storage, it took the cigarette briefly in one tentacle-pincer while using the other two to help its owner into his leather coat, lined with a dark, plush fur which spilled out into a broad, high collar. Once he had donned the requested hat, it handed back his cigarette, and he shot Geek an indignant glance, recognizing the idiotic amount of sarcasm in the look the pink ghoul was giving him. Geek stood and rolled his eye at him hard.

“Fuckin’ milquetoast. Can’t even get wet? Statehouse is literally across the street.” Geek scoffed, unable to hold it in anymore at the display. “What is it with Russians and fur?”

“I’ll wear my finest to speak with the mayor if I like.”

‘Choly turned his nose at him and started off to the front door without him, and Geek moved to keep up.

“After you. Ugh, you should drop the ‘your majesty’ act already. It don’t suit you. Ain’t nobody around here likely to respond well to a high an’ mighty chem lord.”

“You’re even more tactless than I am. A feat.”

“You’re just lucky Hancock likes you.”

“Mister Kara is luckier than you give him credit for,” the Frankenstein of a Handy interjected thoughtfully, its several hydraulic optical servos focusing upon him. Geek jerked back in a flinch reaction, never once accustomed to robotics of any kind exhibiting sentience. “You might both require significant acclimation to one another, but there’s no reason to be sour.”

“Just come on already,” ‘Choly muttered, waving at Geek with his smoke hand. He puffed at it a moment while Angel held the door. “I’d like to get this over with just as much as you two.”

“Oh  _brother_.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John, what are you doing...?

‘Choly and Geek both shook off once they got inside the Statehouse, and exchanged glances when each noticed the other doing so. After looking to the spiral staircase, ‘Choly put a hand to the Mister Handy’s spherical side and gave it a vague nod. It halved its thrusters to hover lower long enough for ‘Choly to hoist himself up atop its back via its harness,  somewhat like mounting a horse. The three of them then scaled the stairs.

“Holy moly.” One of the Neighborhood Watchmen on duty inside had recognized ‘Choly. “It ain’t true, is it? You ripped off  _Hancock_? You gotta death wish or somethin’?”

The Russian paused halfway up the stairs to glance down at the guard dully.

“Maybe so.”

Unable to interpret his acquaintance’s demeanor as they resumed their ascent, Geek wondered whether ‘Choly had grown tired of hearing about it, or if this was the way the dreg exhibited pride. Rather than dissect it, Geek’s brain fixated again on the bar argument. Shaking, he started into a fresh cigarette, and put the pack back in his sleeve pocket.

_When’s your flavor gonna run out, Blue?_

“–He’s gonna be heading out soon. Probably wants me to go with.”

“Do you want to go with him?”

“Course I do. ...Provided he still wants me to.”

“How long?”

“Dunno, a couple–” Hancock and Fahr both looked up when ‘Choly dismounted from his Handy. The ghoul mayor stopped pacing and patted at the back of the couch with an odd smile. “Now this is unexpected.”

“I had a bright idea.” ‘Choly took one of the armchairs. “Mmh,  _we_. We did. We wanted to discuss it with you.”

When Geek sat beside Fahr, Hancock leaned lackadaisically on the back of the empty couch to dull his anxiousness.

“You two have my undivided attention.”

Fahr nursed a fat cigar, which Geek stole and traded for his cigarette. In a moment of disconnect, she briefly weighed the safeness of smoking after him, but shrugged it off with only minor nuisance. The musky heaviness of the cigar’s smoke felt outright viscous versus that of the cigarettes, and it soothed him enough to unclench.

“We wanna take back the Boston Library,” Geek began before ‘Choly could get a word in. “Put this lil’...  _entourage_ to the test.”

“A proposal for the three of us to work toward a common goal?” Hancock’s thoughtful interest diffused into concern poorly hid behind a smile. “This is way bigger than  _a problem with rats in warehouses_. It’s all right if you need some time before we try to tackle somethin’ like that.”

An implicit ‘ _I know you’re jumping on this because you can’t sit still’_ lingered behind Hancock’s dark ghoulish eyes, and it ate the pink ghoul alive. Geek took a long, slow hit off the cigar in an attempt to steady his breathing, and he didn’t speak or make eye contact before he’d fully exhaled all the smoke.

“This is gonna be so good for Goodneighbor, an’ it’s gonna be good for me. I owe it to this town, an’ I owe it t’Daisy. An’ I... I owe it to you. You navigated that sh, shh.  _Shitshow_  when my health was too bad for me to stand up for myself. You’re responsible for me gettin’ cured just as much as the guy who  _made_  the cure an’ gave it to me. I’m confident I wouldn’t be here right now if it hadn’t been for you playin’ interference for me.”

No one knew what to say, the only sound the Handy’s thruster as it idled near the doorway.

“Daisy put you up to this, then,” Hancock deduced. He jumped the couch and helped himself to the tin of Mentats on the coffee table. As he slouched on his knees, he let a lozenge melt under his tongue. His hands wandered to fidget with all manner of paraphernalia before him, navigating them as he thought through imagined tactics. “She always has tried to foster chemistry when she thinks it’s off to a rocky start.”

The mayor had nailed not only whose idea it had been, but also how she’d even figured out the trio was soon to become one. When Geek folded in embarrassment of that level of transparency, ‘Choly glanced between the two ghouls in consternation, interpreting the mayor’s description of the merchant’s motives as implicit of Geek and Hancock having hit a bad patch. Had he got himself between a lovers’ tiff?

“Surely you agree with Geek that Goodneighbor stands to gain a lot with this venture. I think we all stand to gain a lot from a library.” The chemist smirked at him coyly. “Can you handle two companions on such an errand, Mayor?”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t go it alone, that’s for sure.” The mayor exchanged a knowing look with Fahrenheit before he reclined back where he sat. “I can tell the two of you have thought this over beforehand, so it’s less a matter of whether this is going to happen and more a matter of how. What kind of game plan are we talking?”

“We, we really ha--” Geek shot ‘Choly a sour look, and the chemist knew he had to improvise. “Well, even if we could just walk in an unlocked front door, I believe that’s not the best recourse. I don’t fare well guns blazing, and even if both of you do, from the sound of it... there’s definitely more super mutants in there than two humans could take at once. I know Angel’s going to be useful here, but we could still get easily swarmed. If I remember right, there’s a subway station underneath the library. We could try to sneak in through the subway and pick off as many of them as we can before they get wind of us.”

“’If you remember right’?” Geek rubbed at his forehead, irritated. “What, you got a photographic memory of prewar blueprints or somethin’?”

“Hey, now. You’re the one putting me on the spot. I’ve been in downtown Boston, and I know the subway made stops at the library. I just don’t remember exactly where the next closest station is, so we could travel below street level.”

“From what I know of subways,” Hancock contemplated, the brain drugs doing a lot of finger-walking across mental maps, “there’s more than one route, and any given train was supposed to only travel on one of them. If there’s a subway station under the library, I’m sure it’s on the same route as Fenway Station and Park Street Station, spatially speaking. I can tell you right here from experience that Fenway’s inaccessible. So that leaves Park Street. Except Geek’s not gonna like that.”

When Geek didn’t get it, Fahr interjected with fatigue, “That’s on the Common.”

“-- _Hhfuck_  no. No.”

Geek got up and paced, face broken with grief, but Hancock was still thinking.

“Don’t worry, I don’t like the idea either, but not for a fear of birds. --No, actually, now come to think of it, that’ll be perfect. Though 'Choly, just to rule it out, you don’t think we could just get into the station at the library from street level?”

“I think coming into the building anywhere near the street doors is more likely to give us away prematurely. Entering the subway that close is too risky.”

“So’s wearing all that fur, to address the elephant in the room.”

Fahr matter-of-factly handed Geek her cigarette butt. He swallowed it with a shit-eating grin that somebody had burned ‘Choly over the unnecessary level of pomp, then savored another puff on his cigar. When even Hancock laughed, ‘Choly turned beet red and mashed his ushanka hat into his lap with both hands.

“Aw, y’all, let him have his fancy duds. He dresses to impress. I respect that.” Hancock grinned at ‘Choly. “Really, though. You think going to the loading platform in Park Street Station and rounding west down the tunnels is the best way to go?”

“I do.”

Geek swallowed his smoke butt and with a thought abruptly pointed at ‘Choly.

“What if the tunnel’s collapsed?”

The Russian gave him a brittle shrug.

“We’ll double back, then. We’ve got to rule out the option. I can’t promise an ideal and effortless clean-out going in the back way, but I can guarantee you it’ll get messy if we just walk in the front door.”

“Well, if you two are so committed to this, who am I to deny you?” Hancock chuckled and patted his knees, then stood. “We should rest up, then, take stock of what we might need. I wanna make an early morning of it, though, so before we part ways for the night, I gotta ask how your supply is, of that stuff you used on Fahr. Seems  _real_  useful for what all we’re settin’ out to do.”

“Today has been exhausting,” ‘Choly agreed too quickly. “I’m glad I haven’t had the chance yet to unpack everything in my room. Saves me from having to pack up for this. The Lockjoint, though? Mh, haven’t used it on super mutants before, but I don’t see why it  _wouldn’t_  work. I should still have a few left. Though, they’re a bit difficult to craft. ...I’ll see what I can scrape together.”

“I could drop everything and go right now,” Geek bluffed. “But I know y’all both need your beauty sleep.”

Fahr rolled her eyes at him.

“You look like I could push you over and you’d pass out snoring, pink stuff.”

“Rest wouldn’t be out of the question,” Hancock insisted, wrapping his arms around Geek. “Come on. You can stay upstairs tonight if you want.”

Attention piqued, the pink ghoul brightened right up, and Hancock brushed the bridge of what was left of his nose against the tip of Geek’s, seeking a kiss.

“We’ll give you two some privacy,” Fahr jabbed, dragging ‘Choly away when he wouldn’t excuse himself, the Handy following. “Sleaze an’ I say goodnight.”

“--Hey now,” ‘Choly objected as the door shut behind them.

“You were talkin’ with Fahr about... well, me before I came in.” Geek pulled away but didn’t squirm out of Hancock’s embrace. “You don’t have to go with me to the evaluation, if you don’t want to. An’ I don’t gotta sleep upstairs if you don’t want me to.”

“Of course I want to accompany you.” His cheek went to Geek’s. “And I very much want you to.”

“It’s okay if y’gettin’ tired of me. I’m a lot.”

“I could say the exact same of me. Everybody’s a different kind of  _a lot_. You haven’t given me a single reason to cut you loose, and I don’t foresee you  _giving me one_.” Hancock grinned at him, looked him in the eye. “Just ‘cause I’ve been giving you your space doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere.”

Geek melted into fully hugging him before pulling away, smiling tiredly at him.

“Sleep does sound good about now, to be fair.”

Hancock dragged him to the floor atop a sleeping bag in the corner.

“That makes two of us.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John........ what are you doing?????

Around ten o’clock the next morning, Hancock, ‘Choly and his Handy, and Geek set out Southbound from Goodneighbor, with minimal arrangements. While the mayor had donned his road leathers and shotgun as before, the chemist favored an odd long pipe rifle and slate slacks and a pale dress shirt, and bracers strung with about a dozen leather ammunition pouches. The pink dreg outfitted himself in his newly customized leather armor pieces. ‘Choly rode the Handy’s back while the other two walked.

“Hopefully, we’re both late enough in the morning and early enough in the day to slip past the big dumb goose.” Hancock adjusted his tricorner hat as he glanced to either side of the street, hands itching to shoot his gun. “All right, make a run for it--”

The group sprinted past what had once been an apartment building, now squatted by super mutants. When ‘Choly recognized the nature of the threat, he whirled his Handy to move backwards, and pulled the rifle off his back to take aim at one of the big green lummoxes. A dart popped the mutant in the chest, and moments later he keeled over with a rigid groan.

“Works on mutants,” the chemist announced clearly once they were out of earshot of the mutants, turning him and his robotic partner back with some difficulty to face the direction in which they moved.

“A fantastic shot as always, Sir,” the Handy lauded. “That oaf was a little too close for my comfort. Or anyone’s, for that matter.”

“One, we can handle easily. But, we’re about to be in close quarters with dozens of them. Best get used to the idea soon.” His companions translated the disappointment in his voice as a mixture of quashed showmanship and stress at the oncoming task, that they’d simply slipped past the mutants so close to town, and they both hoped it accounted more for the latter than the former.

Geek decided that he’d lead the way to the Common, as proof to himself and his companions, that the Swan no longer scared him. Upon passing the ruptured bus besides the Old Granary, the pink fellow still shied to the other side of the street, and Hancock laughed.

“What, you don’t wanna see where I’m buried?”

“We... should be quiet about now,” Geek whispered, too anxious to joke. “Unless you really  _wanna_ end up in the dirt...”

“Why are we shy of the Commons, anyway?” ‘Choly asked, trailing behind them. “You mentioned a  _bird_?”

“Just hope you don’t get to meet it,” Geek muttered, “an’ keep that stupid plankin’ juice at the ready in the off chance we don’t get so lucky.”

“Hey, ah, just real quick...” Hancock waved at them to head down the street perpendicular to the left of the overturned bus with him, and he led them under a parking garage entry arch to the left. He patted his pink friend’s leather-clad and heavily pocketed thighs. “Geek, I know y’got all kinda tools in those apron pockets. Wire cutters?”

Geek made a face but handed over a pair.

“What, why?”

Hancock approached the chain link fence that had once prohibited foot traffic from going under the overpass beside the structure, and got to working at the edge of one of the panels. After a moment he turned and smiled unnervingly at his friend.

“Hey, heyyy... come here an’ gimme a kiss.”

Geek distrusted the gesture but complied with a quick on-mouth peck, only to have Hancock immediately after produce a piece of fence about the size of a dinner plate and wrap it around the bottom half of Geek’s face. Hancock murmured apologetically a bit as he looked over the proportion of the piece compared to his friend. While Geek had no idea what to make of the act, he aided the baffling effort by dropping his hood. ‘Choly had slung the syringer rifle back behind him and was leaning on both elbows across the top of Angel to observe in intrigued befuddlement.

“Is that... a muzzle?”

“Don’t want anything hairy happenin’, love. The stuff you put in your mouth seems to attract all the wrong kinds of trouble some days. Besides... it makes you look extra rough around the edges.” Hancock acted like he was reaching down to cop a feel, but his hand slid down to fish around in the tool aprons on Geek’s thighs for himself. Needle-nose pliers replaced the cutters, and Hancock pulled away from his friend’s personal space while he curled the raw wire edges to make it more comfortable. He pulled a work rag from his back pocket and rounded back behind Geek to tie the piece of fence in place. “Yeaahh. I like that.”

“I’d object, but I really dunno what t’make of this.” Geek tugged at the neck edge of it for show, only to shrug off how silly it must have looked and draw his hood back up. “Least it ain’t cuttin’ into my nose or anything. ...Long as you like it.”

“Are we... off yet?” Even the Handy was confused.

“Angel, my man.” Hancock gave the Handy finger guns, then slapped Geek on the shoulder proudly as they continued on their way. “This was for your protection as well. Trust me on that.”

“Take exception to that,” Geek mumbled offhand.

The Park Street Station stood at the Northeast end of the Commons, the first building they encountered upon arriving at the park square. Behind the smallish structure in the distance stood a bronze fountain and a domed gazebo, the whole fenced-in pond-park framed with a mixture of old and new buildings ranging from three to ten stories. When Geek spotted a swan-shaped paddle boat on the water’s edge nearest them, he huffed and ducked into the pavilion-like Station entry. Melancholy cocked his head to one side and helped himself to the Nuka Cola machine on the outer wall. The group filed through the double doors of the station to descend the non-functioning escalators to enter the lobby area. The entire station had been plastered in seafoam green wainscot-tile, and signs intermittently announced this station belonged to the “Green Line.” Geek shot ‘Choly a look as he popped open a Nuka-Cherry and drank it while holding onto Angel one-handed.

“What?” He flourished the bottle in dismissal. “I didn’t get my morning coffee.”

“Sorry again we’re out.” The frown in Angel’s voice was apparent. “I’ll be certain to keep my ocular lenses primed to locate more, Sir.”

“Those things are higher in alcohol content than caffeine these days, case nobody told you,” Geek shot off, helping himself to the drawers and cabinetry in the ticket cage office.

‘Choly shrugged, still drinking on it anyway.

They rounded the corner past the ticket cages to the turnstiles, to encounter a ghoul in a pinstripe suit crouched and drinking. She noticed the intrusion and was about to object, only for Hancock to put his shotgun to her chest. He took the bottle with one hand, then pulled the trigger with the other and let her crumple. Then they continued on their way past the turnstiles.

“Can’t let bourbon go to waste,” the ghoul commented softly. He almost passed it to Geek, but withdrew the half-finished gesture with apology. “Forgot.”

“Startin’ t’dislike this thing.” Geek halted them a moment to pluck a handful of grenades which dangled from the ceiling. They weren’t live, so he pocketed them.

“You heard that, right?” they heard a raspy voice ask down the stairway that led down to the loading platform. “Hey Maria! Hold your liquor an’ stop droppin’ it!” Laughing ruckus followed.

Hancock and Geek fell to a crouch to keep head level below the concrete handrail wall as they descended the stairs. ‘Choly fell back just behind them while the two determined the numbers they were up against.

“Rat. Problem,” Hancock whispered to them. “Big one.”

Geek nodded, and sneaked out ahead of the two of them proficient with guns.

“I’m telling ya,” another ghoulish individual insisted, “joining Skinny Malone’s crew was the best decision we’ve ever made. Just look at this place.”

“I still say Malone’s weak,” a smooth, distinctly Bostonian voice replied. “We caught that detective snoopin’ around, and what does he do? Locks him up. Like he ain’t got the balls to just kill him.”

“Well, don’t let his new girl hear that. She’ll start swingin’ that bat of hers at your face ‘til there ain’t no face left.”

Hancock fired off a distraction round which hit the nearest Triggerman in the shoulder, and once he had the attention of the four mobsters, Geek unpinned a grenade and tossed it among the other three who’d all congregated on the opposite platform chatting. The explosion wrecked the mobsters, and knocked down some concrete rubble from the roof. The fourth clutched his submachine gun in one hand and his blasted shoulder in the other, but before he could overcome his disorientation and agony, ‘Choly had pulled out his 10mm pistol and shot the wretch in the head.

“Not sure why I’m surprised there’s organized criminals loitering down here.” The chemist holstered his pistol and glanced to the Pipboy at his right wrist. “Southwest a bit, then due West. We’ll be able to manage.”

“Mmm gonna detour us here, if that’s all right with you fellas.” Hancock continued at a brisk stroll down the loading platform, in the opposite direction ‘Choly had started to head, and left his companions with no choice but to follow. “I’m sure it’ll be of interest to  _at least_  two of us. Consider it an act of good faith. Hopefully won’t take too long, with us all working together.”

After a ways, they all had to hop down onto the tracks when the platform ended.

“You said last night there was somethin’ about this particular station you didn’t like.” Geek felt enough on edge to light up a cigarette and draw his knife. “Was it the rats, or somethin’ else?”

“It’s a bit complicated. Got intel that one of my acquaintances might be down here. From the sound of it, my intel was right, and he’s likely still alive. I haven’t been able to get in here, but both of you certainly can. So we’re going to go bust him out, and bust some kneecaps along the way if we’ve gotta. ‘Choly, I’m anticipatin’ lots of spread, if you catch my meaning. Try to neuter the ones with submachines and miniguns for us so Geek an’ I can get a bit more... personal with 'em.”

The further Northeast they got in the subway, the more decimated the concrete became. Construction and shipping debris littered the whole place, boxcars obstructing entire sections of track and forcing them to switch from one side to the next in order to navigate. The rain from the night before had leached through the ground above them and lent a humid rot-stink to the patches where the concrete had crumbled from its surface. The far end of this chamber had had its atria filled in with concrete rubble, making this one the furthest Northeast one could travel. Another pocket of Triggermen, larger than the first, holed up in the next major maintenance chamber of the Green Line, and they swarmed, having known to stay alert after hearing the explosion before. Construction lamps exclusively lit the entire cave-like bowel.

'Choly provided cover fire for Geek and Hancock from a distance, shooting opposition with Bleedout Syringes and cocktail-doses of poison darts, and peppering in Lockjoint Syringes if it seemed his compatriots might get overwhelmed by the numbers, to buy the ghouls time to contend with them all. Geek’s newly reinvented knife required a great deal of flourish, but he appreciated how its blade-like French curves raked and hooked as well as simply slashing. Like Geek, Hancock also closed the gap between his opponents, favoring intimate chest shots clutching the back of the target’s head to fill their ribs with scattershot and maximize the wounds his shotgun left. Angel, all the while, mostly relied upon the laser attachment of a tendril-limb to stave off any assault that threatened to bear down on its owner, only once needing to pull out its circular saw.

“You’re quite good with that... whatever it is,” ‘Choly commented, once the whole place, piecemeal temporary mezzanines and all, had been cleared of opposition.

“It was a wrench once.” Geek finished off his smoke while he glanced around the place, and ate the butt through his fence-muzzle. “John, your friend ain’t down here.”

“Oh, he’s down here. We just haven’t gone in deep enough yet.”

“But there’s nowh--”

“A Vault--?” The Handy came up with its owner in tow. “Down  _here_?”

“Vault 114,” ‘Choly read, on the massive recessed gear door in the far North corner.

“As I was saying, you two fellas have a front door key. Which of you’ll do the honors of letting us in so we can raise some hell?”


End file.
